The Rhymester's Share
by jozette
Summary: Loki's plan to gain the throne by getting Thor banished has unexpected effects. A prophesy gives him unwelcome news about his future as he is betrayed by those he thought he knew best. This new telling of the traditional tale shows a monster struggling with to reconcile his nature with his family and love.
1. Chapter 1

"Should be used to it by now," Loki reflected glumly.

Another plan had fallen apart on him. Trying to ride at the crest of chaos only lifted him above the stinging waves briefly, but while it did-

A smile marred the line of his lips. There was nothing like being above nature, above his enemies, above everything he was meant to be.

He regretted nothing.

Not even the inevitable crash back to reality, which was painful, but that, too, could be spun into an enjoyment of sorts:

"Look at what I have become," was the subtext to everything he had done in recent years. Not that there was anyone paying attention, was the morose thought that hovered in his chamber.

Loki had lost his audience when his first, best, most delightful plan had shattered in his hands that time. Lashing himself for his early foolishness was homey by now, so the interloper in the family of Odin, the one with no real blood or country, sat with the servants all spelled to a safe, murmuring distance, and remembered.

"You want to put what where?" a young Loki had asked in a good facsimile of shock. He cast just enough of a sidelong glance over his shoulder. He walked ahead in the rocky landscape where they were alone save for a few raptors and the occasional hare that his brother picked off and added to the ones slung on his shoulder.

"I hear the other lads talking about it. Better than knocking up a wench and creating a lot of pretenders to the throne. Do you want me to sully the family name?" Thor was wheedling his younger brother while they were playing hooky from another of father's ridiculous missions.

"Survey the kingdom and bring me your impressions," Odin ordered his two sons every once in a while. In this statesmanship-building exercise Loki had to make up answers for the both of them, of course. Then they spent the rest of the time in disguise wondering at the muck-ridden world usually denied them. Or fighting. Sometimes stealing things.

"Of course not," Loki said in answer to Thor's question, allowing himself to be evaluated-finally. He'd been aware of his older brother for as long as he could remember, but it had taken so many instances of "accidentally" leaving his door ajar while changing or engineered closeness while fighting their stupid pitched battles that the budding manipulator was beginning to despair.

But that day, Thor's none-too-choosy adolescent need at last landed upon the lithe body that could so easily be his.

"Try it and see. I'll make it worth your while," Thor was saying with that sweetness that was so hard to resist. One big hand took inventory of the form he evidently already thought of as his. "Do one of your spells and no one will ever know," was the last thing Thor's brain was in charge of saying before the much more interesting and substantial anatomy took over.

The rules Loki set himself were absolute. Thor had to initiate every act, or at least think he did. That time, and every time, Loki made his brother beg, and it was a feeling of heady ascendancy to see the family favorite and future heir caressing and flattering him until Loki agreed to lend his lips, first, and then everything else.

Except if Loki's plan worked, Thor would not be the king. This release, seemingly without consequence, was anything but.

"It's a banishable offense, you dolt. Some king you'll be if you don't even know the law," Loki thought that first day, surprised once more by his brother's ignorance. Every royal line tried to perpetuate itself by carefully controlled inbreeding, so it wasn't surprising that Asgard had to draw a definite boundary somewhere against sibling incest.

"It's the taboo that's lending spice to the act," was what Loki told himself that satisfying day and for a long time afterwards. For the young prince in search of his own tastes had had his share of dalliances with either gender—carefully hidden from even his beloved mother, with whom he did not wish to share his affinity for a certain blacksmith's apprentice—and none of those experiences could compare to Thor. But the second in line for the throne had learned quite a bit in those experiences, enough that Thor should have been asking how someone so virginally aghast at his suggestions was so talented at obeying them.

Thor gave off a heat that Loki found truly exciting, but his mind was clear. If he could spin it that his older and larger brother had seduced him into this crime, Loki would be happy to assume the throne after Thor was banished. If they were both held responsible, then neither of them would be king. Either would work. Loki was nothing if not flexible, as Thor would come to discover.

Things were going along swimmingly for a long, golden time. Loki was planning and re-planning the great reveal. Would he arrange for his drunken brother to overtake him in the throne room in the middle of the night, leaving off the enchantment that had hidden them from Heimdall thus far? Or perhaps he should be found in mid-ravish with Thor on one of the long banquet tables? Loki imagined again and again the comic look of surprise his brother would wear when their father interrupted their actions and ultimately kicked his ass out of Asgard.

But he kept putting it off. Why deny himself this pleasure, with the deal already almost done? It was quite ridiculous how Thor talked about his "hammer" during their games, but it did have the power to tear down and build up and there was nothing like it once you'd had it.

Sometimes Thor would carry the only slightly resisting Loki to the mirror room and force his brother to watch his own face as he succumbed. In truth, Loki didn't recognize the person he saw in the reflection. It was a greedy, simple joy they found together. For a brief time, Loki's roiling brain fell silent. He watched the transformation Thor was somehow intelligent enough to wreak upon the person plotting his downfall, and Loki kept the revelation until another day.

Thor's usual pursuits were limited to drinking, fighting and women, so of course Loki hadn't hoped to change any of that with his stratagem. One day, however, there was one of those tedious war games among the men of the genteel class. Usually, he put in a good showing because, well, he didn't like any members of the noble class anyway, so causing them pain was a kind of sport. But that day, Loki feigned an injury and sat so he could watch in action the body that would be his that night.

Thor stepped out into the ring and received the expected adulation from the crowd, especially the young ladies. That was when Loki noticed the yellow ribbon tied on his brother's armor. The girls vied to get some token of their affection affixed to the young man they fancied—for good luck, they said, but the practice had more to do with getting lucky after the fight.

Loki traced the yellow to the adornments on the yellow dress of a blonde thing waving and smiling two seats down from him. The fight ensued, but Loki could only feel the rage coursing through him. When Thor won, as he nearly always did, he lifted up his sword, red with an adversary's blood and made a reverence in the direction of the yellow slut who'd veered Thor's attentions two degrees off from where they should have landed.

"Maybe he'll take you flying with his hammer, Etta," the hatchet-faced noblewoman next to Loki said with a naughty laugh to the yellow thing.

"Oh, is it true what they say, Loki?" Etta leaned over to whisper, evidently not referring to Mjolnir. "Is it really, I mean—?"

Loki shrugged. "I've grown up around his manhood but I suppose, yes, it is very considerable." The women tittered. "Then again, I'm not one that has to be wary of it. Do you know he's been banned from a certain whorehouse for making the girls unsuitable for other customers?" There were titillated gasps. "And then there was a young girl of noble stock, no, don't ask me to say her name. Suffice it to say that what she thought would be an easy matter for a canny old crone with her needle and thread turned out to be something no artifice could hide from her new husband."

That last lie did the trick. The girl fled in her fussy gown before the feast, and his brother spent a few minutes in doltish surprise at this unique experience of being jilted. He soon turned his eyes to some other blue-blooded bitch, but Loki was gratified to see that from that day forward, girls from the noble set were much more reserved with his brother.

Thor took this annoyingly in stride, and with his eternal good humor turned exclusively to women of the lower class. Watching Thor come back from these trysts all dirty and sated did Loki no favors either. He wasn't sure how it happened, but now he was eaten alive imagining his brother pounding away at some milkmaid, looking at her with the same oafish happiness that Loki always saw gazing back at him. "You like that?" Thor would say to the milkmaid, who was doubtless having the time of her life if she had any red blood in her at all. "Right there, like that?" Thor would pursue eagerly, and she would whimper and cry her assent.

Of course. Thor was so _good_, naturally he would be an attentive lover, Loki thought bitterly. That was why from the very beginning, Loki had been surprised that his partner in crime had no qualms about lending a helping hand. He liked the proof of Loki's enjoyment, the straightforwardness between men, his sibling had come to think.

He became obsessed with what his brother gave these lowly girls that was different than what Thor gave his brother. He began taking aimless walks at night to get away from the sickly close air of the castle, to stop keeping tabs on when Thor came in. Sometimes, he was ashamed to say, he followed at a distance. The clever words on his lips dried up and the prince began avoiding the awareness that he had little to say to anyone. Only, on certain nights, Loki did have a trick for stealing some of Thor's attentions for himself.

Everyone in the castle knew very well that Loki was an advanced student in the obscure arts his mother, Frigga, was versed in. For years the boy Loki had been turning people's breakfast into snapping turtles and sending a shade of himself into wrestling matches with Thor so that the real Loki could jump out and win at the last. The common people were both wary of the young adept and likely to ask him for boons in a dark alley. The Son of Frigga (that's what they called him, supposedly to differentiate from Thor-Son-of-Odin) carried out his own low errands in the sorcerers' huts and amulet hawkers' streets. So Thor was unsurprised when his brother started showing up at banquets in a female form.

Rather, it was always a surprise, but Thor naturally accepted that the cleverer brother could do such things. The woman who was hanging all over Thor during a feast would suddenly lean over and divulge some secret only Loki could know: "I remember when you cried for days over your puppy that got run over by a cart. What was its name? Alfie? You weren't in short pants any longer, I don't think." Then the fetching damsel would lean back and take in Thor's shock, whether at the idea that his brother was currently female, or the forbidden circumstance of them being physical in public, he couldn't tell.

By this point, Loki was only sure of one thing. He was drowning in his own schemes. Seeing Thor agog with his female charms was amusing, but he more properly wished to keep that trusting gaze away from any female pretenders to the throne. (The aristocratic young men had no idea how lucky they were that Thor never tried it on with any of them. Their sparring sessions would have gotten very nasty, Loki reflected several times in his desperation. That was only for them, besides, said the brain that exclusively produced sentiment these days.)

Being the curious boy he was, Loki's own explorations had extended to the female gender—both being and having. Any inconvenient repercussions from those experiments could be dispatched by a brew any third-rate spell-caster could make. So as a maiden, he'd enjoyed himself without fear of creating any bastards.

Loki was toying with the idea of letting his brother experience the totality of what he had to offer by taking Thor into his womanly lap, but the prospect of being tossed aside like all the other girls wooed by Thor was absolutely intolerable.

"Old sir, I hope you have been well," Loki said, stooping into the low eaves. "I have come to—"

"I know what you have come for, Loki," the small form said with glittering eyes just visible under the big hood within the gloom of the hovel. "And I also can tell you I do not have it."

"But," Loki faltered, and sat on the cleanest-looking bench. "Have I ruined everything? I want to know," he said more desperately than he planned.

The famed sorcerer was unperturbed. "You want to know what, specifically?"

"How to be king," Loki said much less automatically than he would have before the advent of his plan.

"You wish to rule Asgard," the little man croaked.

"Yes, yes, that's what I said," Loki said impatiently. "Mother always used to say you were the one who knew everything that should be known and most things that shouldn't. Out with it or I'll turn your shanty into a shithouse."

A gnarled hand emerged to make a calming gesture. "Then you need do nothing. So it is ordained. That is all I have to give." The hand beckoned for Loki to repay it with some coins.

"What? I don't believe you. It can't be that simple to take Thor's place in father's affections." The would-be sovereign was aware that he was airing his own unlikelihood of ascending the throne before a wily old dwarf. "How is it going to happen? I have a right to know!"

"No one has a right to the future, my son. Far better to enjoy your youth, which in your station cannot be devoid of pleasure."

"Yes, well, I've never stood much on ceremony, so the endless speeches about the honor of our line got old some time back," Loki said drily. He rather liked talking with the amoral conjurers who knew everything in life could be had for enough money and no scruples. And it's not like it was any secret that there was only one throne in the offing. "If all that rot has to go on, I want to be at the top of the stinking heap."

"Everything is as it should be, young man, why bother yourself so?" The hand grasped a long ladle and took a portion of a steaming drink from the cauldron simmering on the fire.

The cup extended out into thin air and crashed to the ground. Loki was already at the creature's throat with his dagger. "Quit shilly-shallying about or we'll put this supposed immortality of yours to the test," he said through gritted teeth.

"I don't have what you are looking for." A drop of blood gleamed on the knife. "But your father does."

"My father?"

Loki had scarcely been able to stand still while the old gnome trotted out his long, convoluted tale of the Poetic Mead, now lost —another drop of blood had been elicited at that point—and finally, the Rhymester's Share. Then Loki dashed out into the night, leaving a rain of coins in his wake.

Too bad the actual Mead had been lost. Only a great fool would actually "suffocate on their newfound intelligence" as had supposedly happened to those who drank of it. Leave it to his righteous father to take it away for the common good, leaving it only to the gods, who occasionally gave a drop to a troubadour or some other total waste of the true knowledge Loki could make such good use of.

He hurried through the streets. This Rhymster's Share was basically the backwash of truth, supposedly safe for anyone to drink. "Your father keeps it in a hidden place, so perhaps it is not without its own potency," the dwarf had told him. "If there is anything that will help you see the future, that's the stuff. But first, have some grog. How's your mother?"

Loki had no time for pleasantries. He calmed his face and settled his clothes so that no one would note his urgency when he returned to the castle. And using his many years of hide-and-seek with Thor, as well as all the time he'd spent at this mother's knee listening to the lore of the castle, Loki searched steadily until he found the container.

All of his senses told him it was guarded by more than the usual number of enchantments, so Loki spent some time figuring out how to open it without bringing some unknown magic down upon his head.

At last, the silver tap swung back and Thor let one cautious drop into the glass he'd brought. He sniffed and then gagged. It smelled like something many times regurgitated, which, truth or no, was revolting. Nervous about getting caught and never having another chance to try it, Loki swallowed just a little, enough to have a preliminary effect but not sufficient to kill him, he hoped.

Then he painstakingly replaced the braids of magic roped around the cask and waited to feel different. Nothing at all seemed out of the ordinary, and finally, a disappointed Loki went to sleep.

The dream was only technically that because it happened while he was asleep. It had a different texture and urgency, however. Loki was seeing the future. Or part of it, until he managed to tear himself away from his bloody fate. He woke up with a parched throat, wishing to tear out what he had seen from behind his eyes.

"What is the matter, brother?" Thor padded up to him when Loki was returning from the kitchens with several bottles of wine to dull his senses. "You shouldn't be drinking at this hour that is neither night nor dawn, but you certainly shouldn't drink alone."

Loki let the bottles be taken from him and followed his brother to Thor's rooms, accepted the glass poured for him, and the next and the next in quick succession. He looked at Thor, who, he was forced to admit, was sometimes the best person to be around when you felt absolutely wretched. He said nothing—what did Thor ever say, really?-and merely hulked there with his animal warmth.

"Do you want to tell me about it? It must have been a bad dream," was all the older son of Odin said. The look of horror he got in response was taken in stride, and eventually, Loki was taken under the great arm. He shivered and gave into the hand petting his hair. "I would give anything for you to be well." Loki ground his forehead into the capacious armpit, not even caring that he looked terrible. "You have been far away from me recently, and I await the day when you will have me again."

Then Thor's gentle voice became a steady murmur, and Loki allowed himself to drift upon it. He drank more wine so as to keep the syllables flowing steadily, carrying him far away from a life he no longer understood, to a place where only he and his brother existed.

Loki fell asleep. He woke up not knowing where he was, and then when he placed himself in Thor's chamber, he went into a panic. Didn't the great oaf know that they shouldn't be caught sleeping together?

He bathed and turned up at the dining hall for what turned out to be dinner, his gut queasy and his heart full of dread. Odin scowled at him with his eye. "Melancholy does not mix well with mead, my son," he intoned. "Those of our stripe must be able to stomach their drink or it sets a bad example for those with less judgment."

The second son gave in gratefully to the familiar lecture about keeping up appearances in the ruling class, barely daring to acknowledge his brother's smile. He ate the plain broth that had been ordered by his mother. Frigga said, "You haven't been well, my son, but I didn't realize you were drinking to excess. At least last night you had the sense to indulge at home while your brother watched over you, but I shudder to think where you have been these many nights. Your father and I think you need more fresh air and less time by yourself."

"Yes, mother," he mumbled.

"Your brother will be accompanying you as you discover the simple pleasures, such as you may never have noted them before." Loki sent the portion of broth welling into his nose back down his gullet. "Hunting, dueling, shooting. You never had as much time for these pastimes because you were a good scholar. Perhaps we have encouraged you to think too much. Promise me you'll try to have patience with your brother as he cares for you?"

"Of course, mother, father." Loki ate with an appetite he wouldn't have expected after that much alcohol consumed so quickly the night before. Pushing the dream into the back of his mind, he gazed at Thor, once, as he accepted some fruit from the big paw.

Loki had truly been ill, he came to realize. All that prowling about in the middle of the night had been the sign of an unquiet mind. He gratefully gave in to the kindness of both his parents as he had not noticed it before. His plan was forgotten as the recuperating young man thought of nothing except taking advantage of all this sanctioned time alone with Thor.

They went riding for hours, far away from the castle. With the help of Loki's tricks, they kept his steed riding next to them powered by a shade, while the real Loki rode in front of Thor on his horse. This perversion was truly all the older brother's idea, and it was the best one yet. They coupled with the stallion jouncing underneath their bodies and it was exquisite.

But that's not all the two brothers did. They talked and tracked game, they had picnics in the mountains and joined friends—who Loki now realized were not just Thor's friends—for sport in the town, Thor always keeping a watchful eye for signs of melancholy in his brother.

If Loki had thought about it, there were no girls during this time, no one coming between them. But he was too well-cared-for to notice.

One afternoon they'd flown with the help of Mjolnir to a plateau covered with windblown shrubs.

"Loki," Thor said after their enjoyment.

"Mmm?" Loki rubbed his head against the broad chest like a cat.

"Let's go somewhere that they don't know us. I'd be a farm-hand in any realm if I could come home to you."

"You've never done an honest day's work in your life unless you count what we just did." Loki reached in the side-pocket to his boot and drew out a coin. "Here." He went back to not thinking.

"I mean it. There are—things—we can't let people know because they wouldn't understand." They never talked about what they were doing, and this made Loki sit up. "But we could do what we like somewhere that they don't know us. Do you think I would make a good vintner?" He stretched out his enormous feet and made a stamping motion as if to crush grapes.

"And where would I be in this little fantasy of yours?" Loki asked.

The idea took a moment to hatch. "You're the one everyone at court looks to for the latest in vestments, you could be a dressmaker."

Loki made a noise of disgust.

"Or perhaps a merchant. You're good with sums and you're wily enough to drive a hard bargain," he said, thought it was Thor who was driving his own hardening for emphasis.

"I'd rather be a thief," Loki said, warming to the game. "That would be nice, me as a sort of robber-baron and you as my brute." He stroked a sensitive spot and Thor made that purring noise that drove him mad. "Would you tear apart my enemies upon command?"

"I'd do anything to defend your honor," Thor replied in a serious tone.

"What?" Loki snorted. "If I ever had any, which is doubtful, we must have left my honor behind in one of the stables you like fornicating in so much."

"No, Loki, you've never given me your true virtue, your maidenhood," his eyes traveled down to a theoretical womanly lap and then up. Thor mistook the horror on Loki's face for modesty, "As is proper. We can follow the custom of whatever land we end up in and you will be my bride. My witch, I know you can."

Then a thought traveled so quickly through the big man that he shook off the smaller one without meaning to. "Actually, there's no reason to leave! With you disguised as a lady we can stay right here. You can be a woman come from afar and settle with me to have a family." He surrounded the narrow shoulders in excitement. "We'll be ruling together, you and me."

"Don't you think mother and father will notice my absence when this mysterious woman appears?" Loki inquired, the images of his dream rushing into his head.

Thor knit his brow. "I'll say you died, and soon they'll forget because a new generation will be starting—"

Once started, Thor wouldn't shut up about his idea. Loki grimaced at his brother's estimation of how easily he would be forgotten. He was probably right. As plans go, it wasn't a bad one. Except for being fatal.

"Don't you want to give me your quim?" the whisper came in his ear. It was an unusual impropriety, coming from Thor, and unlocked some new level of acknowledged lust between them as he was claimed in the usual way that was already quite complete.

Loki gave in, wanting to see the progress of this poisonous idea as it began to ruin everything between them. To his surprise, it was a sweet sickness that overtook his limbs that day with the clouds scudding by so close. He never imagined the draught of death would be so—nice. Thor kissed him and he let himself be kissed, not to urge their enjoyment on, like their occasional kisses, but so that nothing was left out.

Loki was cut in two during that coupling. He felt truly sorry for his brother, who was giving all of himself to the task, not knowing that he was pushing Loki away with every stroke.

"I wont. I can't." Loki cried without language into the corded neck.

He would not become the monster of his dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

"Kneel," Thor was saying with his usual cocky grin one day when they were taking shelter as two commoners in an inn during an unexpected snowfall.

This was one of their rituals from the very beginning of their games, and the older brother was used to Loki sinking to the ground—after some protest—to lend his silver tongue to pleasurable ends.

But Loki had been irritable ever since Thor's idea of ruling as husband and wife had taken hold of his brother's mind. This day he merely stared at the fire where he was warming his socked feet. "I won't have you, you know," he said about their ongoing argument about marriage. "Why would I give my hand to someone who never once thought to kneel before me?"

It was only his latest way to put off his brother's touching enthusiasm for this future he'd cooked up, but Loki was truly surprised to see the big, blond head lowering to an unimagined level and, shortly, the thick tongue fumbling around with his nether bits.

"Like this, Loki?" the hot mouth asked his member for some undefined period of time.

His slim hands were lost in the coarse hair, and much sooner than he would have wished, Loki was panting with what he knew to be a foolish expression on his face. "One might think you'd done that before," he whispered in a susceptible tone with none of the bite he intended.

"No, it's that you inspire me to be more than I already am. You see, my heart?" The big man drew the slender one close to him. "I would give you anything you ask, if you will only give yourself to me. Put me to the test and you will find me man enough for any challenge you set."

It was not the first time that Thor tried to prove wrong one of his brother's reasons for avoiding his suit, but now the older sibling began pouncing upon every supposed fault Loki pointed out. Loki was quite helpless before the Thor now eager to perform any perversion so that he could elicit Loki's frankest cries, a sound that never ceased to surprise Loki himself.

But this was not the only way in which his brother was surprising him. The idea of winning over his chosen bride had turned Thor into a different man overnight. No longer easygoing and lazy, he was eager to show his brother, his father, anyone who might think otherwise, that he was indeed kingly material.

For the first time, Thor listened to the various intrigues unwinding in the stateroom and ventured his own opinions about what should be done. Loki was already well aware that his plans had taken a sharp turn for the worse some time back, so he watched these displays quietly. He was beginning to gather that it didn't matter what Thor said, so much, but that he believed he had a right to say it. Thor did seem a king, arguing with his father about some military strategy. And when Odin rebuked the young man for some failing, Loki was the only one to see Thor's new rage for what it was: a love that would not be turned from its target.

Naturally, the court thought that Loki was sulking in a corner because his brother was showing him up, but in reality, Loki was paralyzed for another reason—by the poison that had entered his system with his brother's proposal. Or earlier than that: Loki now understood that some deadly warmth had been worming through his deepest passageways and now the hardened, cynical surface he had so proudly cultivated was a coating a mere inch thick, the rest of him having melted into some treacly sentimental soup from Thor's growing passion. For hours at a time, Loki let his crust cave in and he gave in to enactments of some short but happy future he was pledged to prevent.

Loki had gone several times to seek out the counsel of the old dwarf, but his hut was abandoned and no one knew where he might have gone—no one could pass up the bounty the prince placed upon the gnome's head. So, naturally, he turned to the offerings of other dwellings in that part of town, careful to buy one ingredient in each apothecary he visited so that no one would divine his plan to fight poison with poison.

It was most convenient to use the hair-clasp given to him by Thor, one of the many jewels and trinkets his brother was showering him with these days, and the only thing he didn't take off when they had each other. The hasp was sharpened, dipped in the noxious fluid and then fastened to his hair, awaiting the moment when Loki had at last had enough of this feeling he refused to name. Then he would plunge the slender weapon into one of Thor's most hidden arteries, in a place that no one but him would ever see or touch or adore again.

"My love, father is going to cede the throne very soon, I know he was impressed with the way I led the troops on maneuvers today," Thor confided while performing one of his new amorous skills, yet another area in which Loki was forced to recognize his brother as a quick study. "Have you planned your death to the last detail so we'll be ready?" Thor asked with an incongruous smile.

Yes, Loki could see the chain of events leading to his death unfolding, as he had since drinking those few noxious drops. The first vision from his dream had been of his brother sitting happily on the throne and giving a sidelong, smirking glance to a figure bedecked as a queen. "We made it, and I'll have you later," the look said.

Then there was only monstrousness and death. A shocking amount of blood flowing out of the pale woman with the dark hair bleeding out across the pillow.

Thor stopped what he was doing, sensing the other's disquiet. They were now connected by a nerve Loki was helpless to root out, even as he felt it growing around his own neck. "Do not be sad about leaving your life behind. My Loki, you will be born into a new life with me. And then we will bring life to a new generation for the kingdom." Loki went rigid with terror. "Only be mine, as I am already yours, body and soul. Have you chosen your new name yet?"

He should have known there was no stopping it. Once Thor got going, all that power just built and built and the only thing left to do was wrap your legs around tight for the ride. Father and Mother were planning the coronation ceremony, leaving Loki the consolation that no one was paying attention to his conflict. This gave him the opportunity to be honest with himself as he should have been long ago: Loki wouldn't be able to kill his brother.

The alternate scheme was supposed to buy him some time. Who could think with all their humors at a rapid boil because Thor was always near?

The timing couldn't have been better. Odin was poised to name the new king when the wily old man sensed it, as Loki knew he would.

"The Frost Giants," his father breathed.

The well-planned mini-invasion—for which Loki had laid the groundwork—went perfectly. The intruders were quickly dispatched. Thor was not made king, and thus, not in a position to choose his queen. Loki enjoyed seeing his brother stand up to his father's predictable wait-and-see approach. Disaster averted, for a time.

He hadn't been precisely _for_ Thor's insistence on going to Jotunheim, but mostly Loki was worried about one of their enemies realizing that it had been the younger brother who had led them into the trap in Asgard, and killing him for it. But no one could stand in Thor's way these days, and the dangerous trip seeking to rain retribution on the heads of the Frost Giants had been taken.

Then there was only the fight. "Thor is magnificent these days," Loki was thinking in admiration. "He's a whole man with a purpose, and I was the one to give him that—"

The Frost Giant's icy hand on Loki's arm called him back to the fight. With what would surely be his last thought, Loki prepared to die. "The Rhymester's Share was wrong," he considered with surprise. "I'm not going to die in a childbed soaked with my own blood. I'll freeze and crumble right here."

Except he didn't.

Loki and his attacker stared at the unnatural blue seeping up his arm. His mind retrieved another central message from his dream:

"Monster."

"Monster." The word welled up from some deep certainty he'd always ignored, and he looked at the creature staring at him with its unnatural red eyes that recognized something of itself in him.

Loki slew it. He then buried his questions with everything else he was used to keeping to himself.

He and his brother were rescued by their father, as Loki had intended, and then they were brought before the king to be scolded. It had happened many times exactly that way.

When Odin did so much more than that, Loki was surprised and horrified. He didn't actually want to give up what he and his lover had together—he merely wanted to keep things as they were. He tried to come up with some soothing lie but Odin roared him into silence. Then Thor was gone, banished, and Loki was alone with his father.

"The casket wasn't the only thing you brought back from Jotunheim," he stated flatly.

"No, it wasn't."

Loki listened to the tale of his own monstrous parentage from the man he had thought his father. "Why did you do it? Why bring me back? You do everything with some purpose," Loki demanded. Odin hesitated. "Tell me!"

"I had thought of bringing about a lasting peace between our two realms, through you, but as your mother has often pointed out, you have brought much more to our family." Loki was calmed for a moment. His mother, that is, Frigga, was a wonderful woman. "For instance, it was she that pointed out from the beginning how well you and your brother complement each other. 'They can do without each other no more than night can do without day,'" she used to say as we watched our sons, the dark head and the light, sleeping. Together, your mother and I saw what you and Thor could not for so long: that you, Loki, would rule Asgard."

Confused, Loki tried to understand what he was hearing. "Me, as king? Then why all this pomp leading up to Thor's ceremony?"

Odin smiled his tired smile. "My son, I did not say that you would be king. I said that you would rule. Everything I said to your brother today was the truth: he is neither temperate nor well-schooled. Your grandfather was much the same. That is," the king amended, "After he was kicked in the head by his horse. His chancellor ruled in every way except the literal one from then on."

In most of his portraits their grandfather did wear a permanently stunned expression, but Loki had never thought about the person in the chancellor position during his rule. "That's all very well. You schooled me to do my lessons and Thor's all these years, and you intend for me to keep on carrying him, but you'd never allow a Frost Giant on the throne of Asgard!" he spat.

Then he added more quietly. "Besides, Thor isn't all that stupid."

("Yes, he was. He loved a monster," came the unwanted thought.)

"Thor is a good son, and a good man, but he lacks a certain quality you are blessed with in abundance, my son," Odin said, making a calming gesture when Loki flinched at the title. "You know what needs to be done, no matter how unpopular it may be, and you have the strength to do it. That is what your mother and I saw you doing so well from the shadow of the chancellor's seat, while Thor brought his many good qualities to the throne."

"And what made you think that the amoral bastard you raised would lend his duplicity to your plans?" Loki muttered.

"Because you have already proved yourself."

The prince looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Let us join your mother, my dear Loki. She is waiting for us."

Loki allowed himself to be led into the queen's private chamber, where she had a refreshing drink ready for him. He refused, preferring to keep the bitter taste in his mouth.

"My dearest Loki, my son who has brought me so much companionship and amusement," Frigga began, and then said something completely unexpected: "It is only natural that your brother should have sought comfort in your arms." She held up her hand at her son's spluttering.

Finally Loki managed, "You knew we weren't brothers, so it was no crime." His plan would never have worked. What's more: his mother had just taken all the excitement out of what he'd believed to be incest in a few words.

She nodded. "I told your father it was better than Thor siring a lot of natural sons, though you I had taught how to avoid such a calamity at an early age."

"I'm not a sop for my brother's youthful emissions!" Loki cried, staring from one parent to another. "Is that what you kidnapped me for—to be the plaything of a prince!" He felt filthy. Perhaps his mother had been enchanting him for this purpose his whole life? That brought up another question: how could his magic have been so poor, besides?

"How did you know, mother? This sorcery was of my own innovation, and I'm positive no one at court has sensed anything amiss. Heimdall suspects not a thing."

"You underestimate a mother's knowledge of her sons," Frigga smiled indulgently. Loki's gorge rose at the idea of the many perversions practiced by the two boys being meticulously predicted by their parents.

Odin took over, "It was not something we planned, but as I am sure you are aware, statecraft requires seeing an opportunity where one least expects it. These many months you have had Thor's affection, and eventually his love. You were becoming ill by denying yourself his company, and your mother and I did nothing to keep you apart. Your brother can now see nothing but you."

Some terrible presentiment was growing in Loki's mind. Could Thor's wooing of his chosen "bride" be a plan sanctioned by both his parents? "I won't have him! I refuse him several times a day!"

The two sovereigns exchanged a satisfied nod. "I know, my son," Odin said. "You had complete freedom to do otherwise, but you chose to give up love because it was the right thing to do. You are ready to rule. And after your brother has calmed down a little, you will rule by his side, not as his wedded spouse, but as chancellor, as the one who makes the hard decisions required to protect our kingdom."

"You would never have let us marry," Loki finally understood. "Anything but let me mix my filthy Frost Giant blood with Thor's." His dream-visions of deformed offspring now made too much sense. Suddenly he put together the two hatchet-faced girls that were always hovering about with his parents' designs. Which of them was intended for Loki, and which had been smirking at him, knowing that Thor was destined for her?

"Perhaps in a few generations, that will be possible, but now such an offspring would be the best excuse for our enemies to dispute the throne," Odin said with is detestable even tone.

"But content yourself with the idea that you, Loki, are laying the groundwork for peace in the future, by giving up your happiness for today," his mother said warmly.

"Whatever understanding you boys come to with your respective wives is, of course, not your mother's nor my concern," Odin said, his eye looking vaguely towards the ceiling.

Loki felt all the breath sucked out of him. His so-called parents had even planned out his future adultery.

He was suddenly very glad he was not related to these people.

"You don't know me, nor Thor!" he burst out. "We'll find a way to rule together, our way, you'll see! He loves me more than any throne. Yes, me, the monster with his monstrous appetites! I had to hold him back from going into exile for the sake of walking down the street with me on his arm." Loki was looming over his father, fixing on nothing else but that eye staring at him in wonder. "That's right, I'm going to find him wherever you sent him and say yes! You'll see what happens then, you spidery old man, the day I turn my noxious breeding parts upon the throne of Asgard!"

(Blood and monsters, his own death, mattered nothing to Loki at that moment.)

"Loki! Loki!" His mother was shaking him. Together, they watched Odin Allfather slowly collapse.

"Oh, Mother, I'm so sorry!" Loki said over and over as the attendants were called and his father borne into his chamber.

"He doesn't always tell me when he is going to enter the Odinsleep, so perhaps this was foreseen," Frigga comforted him. "Your father sees many steps ahead, and he loves both his sons. You and Thor together are two halves of your father." Loki knew that he was assigned to the scheming, non-loving part of his supposed scion, and was too overwhelmed to argue any more on that strange day. "Dear son, you and Thor will be reunited someday, and you will both see things more clearly after this separation."

Loki retreated to one of the portals that revealed the Earth's goings-on most clearly and tried to regain mastery over his situation. Or gain it for the first time, as he saw his controlled existence clearly after today's revelations.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that he was some puny version of a Frost Giant that was weighting his limbs with cold and gripping his heart with ice. Or, more likely, Loki was tainted by that frosty conversation with his meddlesome parents. Of course they wouldn't think he was good enough for Thor. Luckily, the trusting and good older brother was nothing like his parents. Thor had thought Loki to be plenty good enough for him, and he wouldn't mind what his beloved's true parentage was. They were always too busy when they were together to think of such things.

A sly smile on his lips, Loki searched for his brother. And was brought up short.

What's this? Thor swanning about, shirtless and chastened, in front of some mortal women? From all the way in Asgard, which might as well be icy Jotunheim without his lover, Loki watched the earthly events unfolding. At the same time, some of the images from his foreseen future welled up in his mind.

One of the mortal women Thor was talking to was in Loki's dream. He'd thought her a handmaiden or something, plain thing that she was, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

As was Thor's courtly, doting expression as he explained the mysteries of the Nine Worlds to this cunt.

Loki could now see a new danger, more pertinent than controlling parents. He prepared to visit Earth, taking extra care in his aspect and in maintaining a neutral demeanor. The last thing he was going to do was beg for Thor to remain true to him. All the while he was imagining the insipid seduction scene that would take place between his brother and the mortal:

"Oh, Thor, you're so otherworldy and muscly!"

"Oh, human maiden, you have nothing to fear from me, your humble servant."

Simper simper, snot snot. Does this girl know what kind of positions Thor had him in? That they had to stop going under disguise into whorehouses because Thor's fervor was such that they made the other customers flee for their lives with the shaking?

Loki had lost many things today, among them any sense of who he was, but he wanted to be sure of one thing. He appeared before his brother on earth.

"I had to see you," he said in a more craven tone than intended before that rough-hewn lump of comfort he sorely needed right then.

Thor looked so lost and vulnerable.

Loki wanted to slap him.

"Wake up! Our parents are trying their best to ruin our lives!" was what he wanted to say. But he could smell the human bitch's stink on his brother, and so what came out was some spontaneous series of lies about their father being dead and Thor's banishment indefinite.

"You don't question me at all, brother? Have you not met me?" Loki wanted to say. "If someone came up to me and said one of our parents were dead—well, I might not mind so much, wait till I tell you what they've been plotting—but you can be sure I'd ask for their bloody head on a pike as proof before I resigned myself to a life as a mortal!"

Thor hung his head.

"Don't just sit there, you knob!" He surveyed the puppy-like look of hurt in Thor's eyes as some new, hardened Loki kept talking and talking. "Interrupt me! Say how much you miss me!" Loki was thinking desperately. "Have you already forgotten our plans? Fight for me! Fight against the monster in me!"

They were talking so stiltedly, these two men who should find some world where they could be alone in their love. But at the same time, another Loki was rising up out of the ruins of his life, saying, "It's not love. It never was. If I ever tried my hand at something as prosaic as love, I would never choose someone so pathetic."

Loki left the husk of his brother sitting passively in some too-small chair. Thor looked for all the world like the portraits of their grandfather, post kick to the head.

It couldn't be love, what he felt for Thor. The part of Loki that almost wanted to say yes—yes to marriage, yes to dying in a river of blood bearing some half-monstrous offspring with his brother—was never quite strong enough to edge out the part that refused this fate foreseen by the Rhymester's Share.

Although, if Thor had snapped out of it for a second and asked for Loki's hand once more, at that moment—who knows what his bruised heart would have said. But Thor was too busy proving himself unworthy of the risk, and the calculating mind his parents had urged into growth was capable of seeing that Loki had already lost any claim he once had over his brother.

He tried to retrieve Thor's hammer from where it had been flung by their father, but he had survived just fine this long without it. And he intended to continue to survive.

Loki returned to Asgard without Mjolnir but with a new weapon at his disposal:

Disappointment with anyone and everyone.


	3. Chapter 3

"He can hear you and see you," Frigga was saying as they kept vigil by Odin's bedside.

"No he can't," Loki thought to his former mother. "None of you have ever properly seen me, so you won't see what's in store for you."

He'd go after Odin first. Since his supposed mother had proved herself to be such a schemer, Loki was hoping the old bag would see that Odin had gotten what was coming to him and decide to accept a place in Loki's new regime. He rather liked having her around.

The palace had been hushed, as if the Odinsleep had overcome them all. Loki accepted command of the realm with no fanfare at all, which seemed to surprise everyone. "Top of the stinking heap I'll be," was how he'd described it to the old dwarf, and there was indeed a rancid air about the throne room now. Loki told the ministers and toadies to meet him in one of the simpler parlors if they needed anything from him.

Again, people seemed nonplussed by this choice. They were far more comfortable with his rages unleashed at anyone who tried his thin patience. Loki had lost everything only to gain a throne he no longer wanted in a kingdom where he had never belonged—why deny himself the occasional kick at one of the lapdogs who were there for that purpose?

All Loki truly wanted was to be alone. He kept a close watch on his brother's actions on Earth, and it was as though the true dream had been his romantic idyll with Thor. Now Loki had been brutally awoken by the hussy all but throwing herself at his brother.

Who had also awoken from their shared dream. Completely.

Loki searched for some pining glance, some gesture to indicate that Thor missed the future they had imagined together. Finding none, he sent the Destroyer after him. Why should Thor get to start again like nothing had transpired between them, when Loki was utterly bereft?

The intent was never to kill Thor, precisely. His going plan was to keep Thor in a dungeon somewhere and roll him out to perform sexual favors. On special occasions, he would make his brother watch while some vigorous lad took Loki as a female.

Meanwhile, Loki had set in motion the plot against his father. Appropriately enough, using Laufey, the king of the Frost Giants and his scion. The one who would pay dearly for the sentimental choice of abandoning his baby to the elements rather than killing him outright.

Loki stood in front of this Frost Giant and hated him as he hated the other father: the former, for siring him into an unhappy fate, and the latter, for giving him life in a cage and tricking him into thinking it was freedom.

"I will hear you," Laufey rumbled from the barren steppe where they met. The enemy king listened to Loki's intentions to leave a passage into Odin's chamber so that Laufey could take his rival's life.

"You're next," Loki promised silently to the red eyes that examined him as if he were no kin at all. "You've not said one word of apology for abandoning your runt son—now see what Loki Laufeyson will do to you."

It was all going splendidly, or what passed for splendid these day. Soon Loki would have taken out the hated leaders of both Jutunheim and Asgard. The next in line to both thrones, he'd consolidate the kingdoms and then set about making Thor grovel his way back into his good favor. Maybe Loki would give the faithless Thor the title of chancellor-paramour. Head cushion-fluffer. Food-taster and bodyguard. Maybe he'd spell his brother into a female form and make Thor breeder and wife to him. All in good time.

But several things happened before they were supposed to. Odin woke up enough to restore Thor's hammer and other powers. Thor got back to Asgard too quickly.

Once again, Loki lost all of his hopes in less than a blink of an eye. "Fight me," he'd ordered Thor. Loki fought to wound, fought to kill this brother who acted as if they had never touched, never loved. (You don't do foolish things like that, he chided himself. Loki Laufeyson uses and then steps over the desiccated husk. He does not love.) His alien blood was rushing in his ears as they matched blow for blow.

"You said you would give up your home, your rightful throne, everything for me." Loki's weapon said what his tongue could not. And, like his words that had already failed him, his weapon proved unequal to his adversary.

"You can do nothing, brother! If you destroy the Bifrost you will never see her again!" was his last attempt to wrest something from this losing battle.

And then Thor did the unthinkable. The strong arm began smashing the connection between Asgard and the other worlds.

Tears pricking at his eyes, Loki was vaguely aware of half the kingdom gawping at the interloper to the royal family (he could see the coldness in their eyes reflecting his true origins) who was dangling before an abyss.

"You don't know what I know," Loki gasped to Thor as he dangled before the void. "You don't know who we've been living with. They engineered everything, probably even this. Don't trust them. I'm the only one who wants to make you happy."

Odin's eye didn't even blink from where he watched, and Loki realized he would have a tough time convincing Thor that this once, the schemers had been none other than Mother and Father. "We can still go away! I don't care about the throne. It's boring! You have no idea. But I knew the Allfather wouldn't ever let us be. I had to get rid of him for our sake. You and me. I did it for you, Thor, for us!"

"No, Loki," came the impersonal phrase from Thor's lips, the ones that had pledged their undying love to every part of Loki's body, the same flesh that had been invaded by some winter that he intuited would last forever.

Loki let go.

He saw one tiny glimmer of remorse in only Thor's face before he was swallowed up by the infinite darkness.

Only part of the pounding was in his head—the rest was outside of a darkness that did not feel infinite. Loki discovered that the thrumming of carriage-wheels against paving-stones was what had woken him up, and that the darkness he'd been caught by was not that of death, but merely a pile of grain sacks that had swallowed him up after breaking his fall.

Loki peeped out at the street for some time, unable to reconcile himself to still being alive. He must still have some self-preservation instinct left, because when the giant began tossing the sacks into a storehouse, Loki jumped out the other end of the cart.

"Another one's trying to escape!" a hooded figure cried. Before Loki could prevent it he was being carried by several incongruously strong small creatures that had plunged their sharp nails into his skin.

"Would one of you be so good as to tell me from where I am trying to escape?" Loki drawled.

"Svartalfheim, of course," one of the small men said. "You lot are always trying to get out, as if there was somewhere to get to. Only one way out of this hellhole, and the auction isn't till tomorrow." He was hurled into a cell and the door locked shut behind him.

"Hello, excuse me?" Loki called out. "Is there anyone else in here?" The weak murmurs and groans he heard were less than reassuring. "What is this auction the dwarves were referring to? A place where they sell their metalware to other realms?" The black dwarves of Svartalfheim were famed for their smithies. "Can I get a message to—" here Loki faltered. No one wanted to hear from him. "Someone?"

"Most of us that have ended in this wasteland have no one to mourn us," a deep voice said from not far away.

"But if someone truly cares about your fate, they should come claim you quickly. A bargain with one of the black dwarves has yet to be broken, once struck."

"I have made many mistakes, but making a deal with a svartálfr isn't one of them," Loki said softly.

"Only rogues and thieves, wastrels and malcontents make it to this dungeon, so why don't you let it all out, my brother?" a squeaky voice prompted him.

And perhaps since Loki could not see his peers or have them gaze upon him (a mirror he conjured revealed him looking something like a wet rat, and he hastily banished it), the former son of Odin told a version of his downfall.

Some gruel was passed from cell to cell at a certain point, but he was scarcely able to swallow a mouthful because his listeners prompted for more of his tale.

Despite himself, Loki found his story lingering upon the lover now lost to him. What harm could it do to acknowledge that Thor was really a lot of fun, and the only good thing to spring from that rotten line of Odin? He even forgot himself describing the many erotic talents that Loki had helped unearth in his eager student. When he described the marriage that he knew would end with him dying of childbirth, Loki was surprised to hear how much he had wanted a much longer future with his brother, the one who dropped him like nothing.

Finally, his throat was dry and he intuited it was dark from the relative silence on the streets and the scurrying that had begun in the darkness.

"Thank you brother, that was a sad tale indeed. For one to fall from such a height to hit bottom in this hole, he would need a mighty sorrow, such as can only be caused by love," said a sniffly voice.

"It was not sad at all!" someone objected. "Were you not listening to the most ribald tale told in these quarters since—"

"Since Rodrigo," another voice jumped in. "That kept boy from Midgard, who got banished here for being too tempting to the court of one of their kings?" completed yet another voice. "He should have known better than to try and steal the man of a woman versed in magic."

Loki drowsed while listening to people argue about what had been the most salacious tale his cellmates had heard. He woke up when he heard someone say, "That Rodrigo had a harsh fate, being bought by a Frost Giant. He was a tiny slip of a thing, one can scarcely imagine it—"

The Asgardian in exile interrupted the new flow of bawdy remembrances. "Bought? You mean it's not handicrafts that are sold at the market here?"

"No, friend, not on the third Wednesday of every quarter," intoned the deep voice. "This is where wives and consorts are obtained by those with a particular taste." There were sniggers. "It's hard to say who has it worse—the ones of us no one will want, and the ones like you whose charms have reached every realm."

"You've heard of me?" Loki asked in a small voice. The last thing he wanted was to touch anyone ever again, and he listened with dread to the enticing stories recited about him by his anonymous companions.

"No one that has to buy their company is very good company, is what we mean," someone interrupted with what might be compassion.

"Then I shall escape."

"Escape? It's impossible. The dwarves have their magic."

"Even if he could escape, where would he go? It's only darker, colder nightmare realms after this one."

"Unless you want to be the servant of a dwarf, which trust me: you don't!"

The laughter rang against the bars, which, true to dwarven form, were impervious to any of Loki's spells. He fell asleep.

In the morning he was awoken by much more appetizing food. If Loki hadn't been so miserable, he might have noticed that the trenchers were being passed along, untouched.

Only after he had had his fill did he begin to hear the voices strike up again. "Loki, tell us more of Asgard. It will get your mind off things." "Loki?" "Loki?"

"Did you tell him not to eat what they served before the auction?"

"No, I thought you did."

"If Loki is as clever as they say, he'd sniff out the stimulant in a moment."

By the time Loki was hauled out into the sun, he was blinking at more than the bright light. His body was utterly relaxed and the somewhat blurry proceedings of the sale seemed highly amusing. He played a game trying to match the voices he'd heard in the prison with the glum-looking creatures being forced to stride before the raucous audience debating and ultimately bidding upon their charms.

"He seems a strapping sort! What was his measure, again?" The measuring tape left nothing out.

"She seems utterly unspoiled—not that she'll stay that way for long!"

Many of the bidders were giants, or at least very large creatures. Loki had heard the stories about the larger races preferring smaller concubines, though these unfortunate lovers seldom survived bearing any eventual offspring.

By now, Loki was aware that he had been drugged, and he was grateful for it, because otherwise he would be trying to break free from his bonds and escape from the consummation of his fate that had him dying with his monster-offspring. He'd already seen one person try to break free and they got a metal arrow to the heart for it.

When they hauled him to the auction block, all Loki could do was laugh at the absurd turn his life had taken. Would his buyer be any worse than the hatchet-face girl that had been intended for him from infancy?

"And our next offering—" cried a dwarf before he was drowned out by catcalls and lewd remarks. "Has shared a bed with Thor Odinson," there were even lewder remarks, "but I'm sure he's still good for something." A nasty laugh spread through the crowd. "This one is conveniently without attachment or country. Capable of shifting to meet your every desire, bidding on your new wife or husband, as you prefer, starts at 500."

Loki was gratified to note that this was much more than the starting sum for any of the other unfortunates, and then he was horrified that his fate was to be had for so little. Each of the faces blurred into the other. It didn't matter anymore which person bought him, since none of them would be Thor.

"Huh?" Loki felt himself hoisted by one giant hand plucking him off the stage at last. "You're the winner, eh?" he said, sizing up the huge, dull face. "I'm confident that wherever your stinking homeland might be, at least it will allow me to unfurl all of my charms."

The face split into a stupid grin, not realizing that Loki was referring to his magic, which was somehow shut off in the land of the dark dwarves.

"So it shall, but I could give you a few secrets for regaining your powers, should you prefer to stay in this stinking realm," came a familiar voice from under the giant's hat.

"You!" Loki recognized the old dwarf who'd told him about the Rhymester's Share.

"Yes, me. You can keep walking, Charles, to the nearest tavern," the dwarf ordered the giant, who carried Loki on his shoulder through the envious crowd.

After a ravenous Loki replenished his strength with some food, the dwarf furnished a few coins and purchased the right to a private bath. While the recent prisoner washed off the dirt from the dungeons, his rescuer talked.

"I bought your freedom because your mother will wish she had done so very shortly. Don't mistake me, she's still furious at you, but not enough that she'd wish you wedded by force."

Loki interrupted with his own thoughts on what marital stratagems his mother was capable of. Then he said, "I looked for you. This Rhymester's Shit has brought me nothing but sorrow."

"I made you no promises, my son. And yes, of course I could avoid a demanding boy, even should he be a prince, or I would not have attained this advanced age. And I rather like you—a plucky sort, for someone raised at court. What will you do with this second lease on life, young man? Midgard has some nice spots where you might find peace."

"I'd rather not share a realm with that bitch Thor is doubtless mooning over as we speak. I believe I'll stay right here," Loki said, wringing out his hair.

"Here? Why would anyone ever want to settle here, given the chance?" the dwarf seemed completely thrown.

"I've always wanted to be a merchant-robber baron," Loki said primly, pulling on his boots. "This place is overrun by brutes, so I could have my pick. Now if you wouldn't mind explaining how to make my magic work in this place, I'll trouble you no further."

It had, indeed, been very easy to set up his own business trading in ill-gotten gains. Most likely this fantasy he'd once dreamed up with Thor was a way for Loki to show his brother's memory that his spurned lover could have every happiness without him. Once his mother's old friend had told him to get around that realm's enchantments, Loki had quickly proved himself to be as ruthless and cunning as any of the inhabitants of that lawless place. The black dwarves were good at driving a bargain for what fell into their laps, but not very smart at seeking out the true riches to be traded between realms.

With no love affair to distract him, Loki turned out to be an even better businessman than he would have expected. But that didn't mean that other parts of him didn't divert him from time to time.

The taverns were ill-lit, violent places where those lost souls who couldn't be sold were eventually press-ganged into prostitution. It wasn't a fate to wish on anyone, and Loki bought the freedom of those few that had some other home to go to. It turned out that he did something far better to upset the flesh trade that ruled in the barrooms and inns of Svartalfheim. Loki Son of No One went looking for comfort.

At first he wanted to prove to the imaginary Thor, who plodded around behind his every move, that what they'd shared was nothing. It had been some time since anyone touched him even in friendship, and Loki secretly longed to cry his eyes out in some forgiving masculine arms. Loki the robber-baron got as drunk as he thought prudent in that den of sin and subtly hung his shingle up to advertise his wares.

"Who'll buy me the next one," he'd slurred only slightly. Thankfully, there were no shortage of offers. All of them strapping. Extremely strapping.

Giants did indeed have a penchant for smaller mates, and Loki was one they all wished to put to the test.

"How do I compare to Odinson?" the giant of the first evening asked eagerly. "You certainly know your way around the bedchamber." The same thing was asked by the next.

Loki would have been insulted to be on the wrong end of a contest between male attributes, but he was in the midst of discovering something more worrisome.

He felt nothing.

Maybe a little something when the latest beau began searching for some warmth within the Frost Dwarf, as Loki was beginning to think of himself. But then the imaginary Thor's disapproval disappeared as Loki sought some type of warmth, any kind of release from his actions. And found none.

Perhaps it was because he came from a race of giants, and that was why he was searching for more and more substantial mates-of-the-evening. Loki was searching for the perfect peace he used to find in his brother's arms, but everyone, no matter how large their frame, seemed so little. And Loki's body had run cold. He even tried Frost Giants on for size, he tried everyone he'd already had over again with him as a woman, but only the worst novelties could quicken his blood for an instant, and no more.

Why would anyone want to pay to have one of the sad-looking partners for hire when they could have the former son of a king for free? By day, he dressed as a man and defended his enterprise by sword and by his other arts. But Loki tried to prove every night that his amorous life hadn't ended with Thor dropping him for that moon-faced Misgardian who was made of such puny stuff she'd not know how to do it on a horse or off.

As when he was at home, Loki had his own store of tricks to prevent disease and pregnancy and keep himself fresh and unspoiled from head to toe. But the settled population of Svartalfheim was only so large, and after awhile, everyone who was interested had already had him every way they wanted to. Then he had to wait for someone to wander in from another realm.

That was when the former prince began quietly slipping a few coins under the table or promising to relieve a debt, if only someone would try to thaw the ice that had overtaken his humors and turned his flesh into some broken thing that no one wanted to touch after a while. Loki stared in the mirror: he was outwardly perfect as either man or woman. But there was something unmistakably dead about him. Maybe it had something to do with the specter of Thor that had stopped coming round to judge him. Without this last reflection of Thor's sunny outlook, Loki had gone dark as his hair that was the measure of his loss.

It had taken awhile. Loki was nothing if not determined to prove everyone wrong. But after two years he saw that no matter where he went or who he tried to become, he was finished.

That's when he cooked up the whole Aether plot to ensnare Thor's human bitch. Let his brother experience the torture of having to kill his dearest love. In this, as in everything, Loki expected his brother to be capable where the younger brother had failed. He loved Thor too much to have killed him when he grasped the poison pin so many times after they made love. But the crucial difference was that Thor loved nothing and no one more than being good. He'd kill the girl infected with the Aether, the black dwarves' power source, and receive accolades from the scheming Odin for it.

Of course, it hadn't happened that way. Thor had saved the day, saved his girl, and Loki had listened to the stories about it from the bar he now owned, which was staffed by the captives no one wanted at the auction block.

At least these one-legged rejects, the toothless and the witless, they never looked with pity at him, the man-woman who could be anyone, anything to anyone except loved.

They made a little society, him and these other unwanted ones. None of them had any regard for the various societies that had rejected them, and he learned even more ways to wring money out of the unthinking and the powerful. Unasked, they directed the newcomers in town to their beautiful and willing employer. Preferably the giants, Frost Giants among them.

Loki couldn't say exactly when it happened, but he knew with who. He scrupulously followed his mother's directions for preventing unwanted pregnancy, and he didn't drink all that much anymore, that also somehow lacking savor, so he couldn't have been too drunk to take precautions.

But he had been spending most of his time as a woman these days. Loki had split the halves of himself into what had been rejected by Thor, and what would kick him in the teeth if given a chance, and his female self he considered to have resisted all of his brother's affections. He offered the part of himself that had not been spurned and searched in the male faces for some sign that they were aware of the great boon they'd received, where Thor had not been worthy.

At some point he remembered thinking that perhaps he wasn't dead inside. His body was tingling and urging him on to find yet another partner over several days, and then one more episode of several with the jotunn whose name he vaguely recalled as Angrboða. He'd indulged because for a moment there had been heat in him.

Heat. Not the heat of one who was not yet dead, but estrus, as in, he must have been in it, in heat. How could his rather good mind be continually proved irrelevant by his body? Thor had a far easier time commanding his flesh to forget.

His future was becoming true after all, despite his best efforts. But why was the best part, the Thor part, being denied him?

Loki tried every art to dislodge the life he could feel crowding his emptiness. He only succeeded in nearly poisoning himself to death. Which would have been just as well.

Puking his guts out from the carelessly composed remedies, Loki cried for days. His foundlings took turns stroking his head and bearing away basins and forcing a drop of brandy down his throat here and there.

Finally he sat up, resolved. "Get me my traveling cloak. I entrust the shop to you in my absence," Loki said to an old woman who had not left his side during his grief.

"What are you going to do?" she asked nervously.

"If I am going to die bearing my monstrous brood, I want to do it somewhat closer to home," a pale Loki said with great dignity. The castoffs that were the only company he could tolerate dressed him like a queen and he headed off to Jotunheim.

Part way there he ignored his swollen breasts and bound himself in his old armor, not sure what type of reception would be waiting for him in the frosty realm he had, after all, tried to destroy by opening the Bifrost.

But what the jotunns he'd had in his bed had told him was true. At some point, Loki had been adopted by the people as a sort of reject-mascot, one of theirs who had been living right in the lap of Asgardian luxury and had nearly torn off the hand that fed him all these years.

The jotunns were not at all sentimental about their ruler, it seemed. He walked among them receiving a curt nod here and there, trading a few goods he'd thought to bring with him, exchanging a little news from the crossroads that was the dwarves' realm. He felt the thing growing inside him take to its icy home, and only some small memory of happiness with his brother protested to Loki that he could never live here, a slight blue creature among giants.

Loki let his behavior be watched for three days. Long enough for the palace to know he was there, and that he had no immediate intentions of settling accounts with Laufey for abandoning him as an infant. Which he didn't, at present. There was another score pending.

On the third night, Loki divested himself of his armor and donned the splendid gown he bought some time back when Thor's ghost was still there to eat his heart out at how good he looked. His weapons were all tucked within his cloak and he stole under the cover of night to the farm where Angrboða had set up housekeeping with the bride he'd purchased after leaving Loki's bed. Using his arts Loki stole into the house and waited until Angrboða had gone.

The former prince slit the cunt's throat. She wasn't with child. He could tell. His pregnant nose could tell the difference between a hazelnut and an almond at twenty paces with his eyes closed. The blood didn't turn his stomach at all, however.

Then Loki set a shade to go about the farm as if doing the mistress's chores. When the master of the house came back, Loki had taken the dead woman's form as his own.

He smiled at the oafish lust he saw spread over the Frost Giant's face—not at all the oaf whose children he would have wanted to bear.

"I'm with child," she said, and the stupid grin grew even broader.

"She wasn't, so it's her fault for not managing the only thing she was good for before I did." Loki nodded to a chair in the corner, where the dead woman had been propped up, her head lolling over the blood-stiffened nightdress. Angrboða scrambled back with a cry as Loki regained his own female form.

"How do you know it was mine? You had any takers, you slut, everyone knows that," the Frost Giant said. He retreated nervously from the blade in Loki's hand.

"I believe your people have a system that allows someone to buy their way out of an inconvenient conception." Loki slashed Angrboða's arm for looking far too hopeful. "It's not that your race thinks twice about cutting loose what you have no need for. When I'm ready, I'll name the price. Until then, we marry as soon as possible. My little monster will have a father. His real father. Do you think that I of all people would make a mistake about that?"

Angrboða bowed his head before a foundling's grasp on the truth of blood. "I'll bury her in the morning." He took off his boots and got into bed. "What is it? Do you mean to gape at me like that for the rest of your confinement?"

"No, actually." The tip of the blade touched something very dear, and the Frost Giant he was stuck with jumped out of bed with a yelp.

"You see, it's already very crowded with me, a growing monster, and all my weaponry. I scouted out a nice root cellar where you might fit very well." Angrboða yanked a mantle off the bed with a curse and left.

"I'll take fresh milk for breakfast if you have it!" Loki called after him. "It's very healthful for little beasties, I hear."

That night, he had been told, Thor, king of Asgard, had married his simpering human. Still, knowing his lover was so close gave Loki a kind of comfort. He drew the quilt around the alien thing growing inside him and was only woken once by his charms alerting him of Angrboða's half-hearted attempt to smash his head in with a fire iron.

Other than that, Loki felt more peace than he had yet in his exile.


	4. Chapter 4

A clang woke up Loki the next morning. The blade that had never left his hand shot out blindly.

"A fine way to repay the one who went out and milked a goat in this weather," his betrothed grumbled, pushing the metal pail towards Loki with his foot. "There's gruel on the hob. I hope you don't expect fine living in my house."

"Our house. Or is the former lady of the manor still aboveground—I wouldn't like to be disrespectful."

"If there's a thaw, you'll be the one finding a deeper resting place for her." Angrboða grimaced and made a gesture out into the blowing frost..

"With her out of the way, I'd like to be wed very soon." Loki ignored the sigh. "But I am going to need some help preparing my bridal gown, as well as to sew clothing for the beastie."

"You'll get not a cent from me. You're the one with the friends in high places," the giant snapped.

"Fine. I'll take care of everything." Loki went to the squalid town square and mentioned he was looking for a seamstress. In no time at all there was a train of dressmakers, young and old, at the farmhouse door.

He gave a critical look at the work samples provided and then paused at one old woman, whose hands were so twisted and gnarled that she couldn't possibly thread a needle. In truth, she stood there with only a piece of thread in one shaking hand. Loki took her apart. "I like the looks of you," he said. "Show me what you can do."

The old woman threaded the needle and then spun the thread into a pouch with a seam that was so finely sewn that when Loki poured water in it and he spilled not a drop. Quickly, Loki realized his luck might have begun to change. He said on impulse, "Would you like to steal back what's rightfully ours from a life that's given us only sorrow? I can pay you in the finest thread on the market."

"Would !" she exclaimed gleefully, and the old woman put down her bundle to stay in the farmhouse.

Seeing a friendly face before the hearth was a great comfort, with Loki feeling vulnerable because of the queasiness of pregnancy. Angrboða didn't complain very much when he came back to the woman sewing by the fire where she had dinner bubbling in a pot, obviously hoping that the addition to their household meant he would have less to do with Loki.

The next day, the two women went to what passed for a market in Jotunheim to purchase sewing materials. At first Loki thought it was the wind trying to pull his purse out of his hands, but then he became sure someone was trying to pick his pocket.

"You'd have to be a master magician to undo the spell that holds my money in my hands," Loki said in a loud voice, scanning the crowd for the culprit. He saw a young girl of about 15 standing across the street staring at nothing. "Catch her," Loki ordered and the old woman threaded her needle, which soon had looped a thread around the girl and held her fast in its knot.

"What are you looking at me for?" the girl asked. "I'm no thief. If I was, don't you think they would have lashed me for it by now?" She stretched out her chubby arms with ten short fingers that wouldn't be much good for picking pockets. In Jotunheim, the punishment for stealing was to have your forearms whipped until it left a mark, so that everyone would know you for a thief thereafter. This girl's skin was perfect.

As the girl went to put on her mittens once more, Loki stopped her. "Where's the other one?" he asked, pointing to a mark on the side of her hand.

"The other what?"

"The other finger, you little minx. I can see where it belongs right there," Loki pointed at the indentation.

Sheepishly, the girl called, "Finger, dear finger," and the finger leapt back into place on her left hand. "My finger can bring back anything, no matter how well-guarded. Please don't tell my secret. I have no other way to live."

"How would you like to steal back what's rightfully ours from a life that's given us only sorrow?" Loki asked. "You'll be introduced to the finest circles with me."

"Would I!" the girl exclaimed and followed them home.

"Who's this now?" Loki's betrothed asked when the girl was brushing Loki's hair before the fire while the old woman stirred the pot.

"She's here to be a comfort to me, and to fetch and carry the things neither I nor my seamstress can carry. Never you mind about the cost." The Frost Giant sat down for his meal without another word. The girl had already stolen a good cut of meat for their dinner, and Angrboða didn't ask any questions about that, either.

"I'm thinking of hiring a handyman to make an addition onto this hovel," Loki said when Angrboða grabbed his blanket to go out into the cold of the root cellar where he had been banished for the night.

The giant paused, scowling. "It's one thing to have a couple of women to keep you company, but I don't like strange men traipsing about when I'm not here. It makes me look dishonorable."

Loki snorted. "Honorable men don't purchase their mates. Besides, if we make this hovel a little larger you don't have to thaw the icicles from your beard every morning."

The man left, grumbling, and Loki exchanged a smile with the old woman. The next day, they sent the girl out to bring back the great-nephew the seamstress had mentioned to Loki.

The girl returned with the young man, and Loki frowned. "This is the one who can throw anything any distance? But he has no arms!"

"I walked all morning to get to his home," the girl confessed. "We got here so fast because he threw me with his feet and then threw himself, feet-first, right afterwards."

Loki watched the armless man roll a snowball with his feet and then launch it into the air. Several minutes later, a hard pellet of ice handed nearby. "You do have a skill, young man. How would you like to steal back what's rightfully ours from a life that's given us only sorrow? I can introduce you to places you've never dreamed of beyond this realm."

"Would I!" the young man exclaimed. Then his brow furrowed. "It would be easier for me to throw things if I could always see where I was throwing them, but I have to sort of guess. They say that there's a man in these parts who can see at any distance. Would you like me to find him?"

"Very much," Loki said after the old crone nodded over her sewing. The armless man wound his body up and launched over the horizon. A short time later, a strange old man hit the frozen ground outside the house, and then the armless man landed a moment after that.

"Are we there?" the newcomer asked, feeling around.

"You're at the temporary home of Loki Laufeyson and some farmer who scarcely deserves the mention," Loki announced, then whispered to the armless ma, "But there must be some mistake. This man in blind!"

"In a way," the young man said, "Pull down your hat," he instructed the blind man, who pulled an enormous hat over his face.

In a moment the old man said, "They're having pheasant for lunch in Asgard. Thor is at the head of the table."

His heart in his throat, Loki couldn't believe that he might have a window into his former home. But he controlled himself. "Pheasant, eh? And what type of bread?"

The man said without hesitation. "Rye bread." Loki felt a wave of desolation. "All except for Thor. He's eating oat bread."

Before he could master himself, Loki threw his arms around the blind man. "That's right! Thor prefers oat bread. He has it at almost every meal. My friend, how would you like to steal back what is rightfully ours from a world that has given us only sorrow?"

"Would I!" the man exclaimed. He was sitting beside the others, warming his feet at the fire when Angrboða came in from the fields.

"What's this! I hope you don't think I'm running a charity," the Frost Giant objected. "I'd like to see an extension built by a blind man and a man with no arms!"

"All in good time," Loki said primly. "We're having rare game birds for dinner, but since they were tracked and killed by a blind man and a cripple, you can fend for yourself, if you prefer."

The armless man stopped turning the spit with his foot and the girl served the tender shoots her finger had expertly extracted from the cold ground. Everyone ate contentedly and soon Angrboða took his blanket and retired to his root cellar.

"Is everything all set for tomorrow?" Loki asked his friends.

"Absolutely," the old woman said. "You are a beauty anyway, but your dress will be fit for a queen."

Loki slept very well for the first time since coming to Jotunheim, now that he knew the blind man sleeping with his hat pulled down would see Angrboða coming should the Frost Giant make another attempt to murder his unwanted new bride. Loki didn't want to ask the blind man what Thor was doing with his little princess at this late hour, but he was ecstatic to have some connection with Asgard again.

In the morning he heard Angrboða bellowing, "What have you done with my clothes? You bitch! Bring me back my clothes or you'll be out on the street, you and your bastard-to-be!"

The girl was snickering with the pile of clothes her finger had stolen from the farmer during his sleep. Loki went to the cellar. "I was merely having my seamstress finish up your wedding suit using your old clothes as a guide," he said innocently. "Show him what you've made-a suit fit for a king."

Angrboða was helped into the fine suit by the old woman. "This is very fancy," he admitted. "But who says I'm ready to marry today? I have things to do," he said evasively.

At that, the armless man threw the richly bedecked Loki and the finely attired Angrboða to the court so that they could be wed by Laufey the king. Then he threw Loki's three new friends and himself.

"We mean to be married, my liege," Loki said with a curtsy. "I know you won't refuse a member of the family trying to give her child a father before her belly begins to show."

As Loki had expected, everyone in the kingdom had heard about his pregnancy and the identity of the father. Laufey was surprised to see the wedding party land from out of the sky, however.

"How did you know where I was?" Laufey asked from where they'd found him deep within an icy labyrinth where he liked to walk in the morning, according to the blind man.

"Certain arts are not unknown to me," Loki smiled. "Can we retire to some warmer place for the banns? This other life inside me may be used to the weather here, but I have warmer blood."

Laufey reluctantly led them to the small chapel where the nobility had the right to contract marriage. "And who are these people?" he asked, as if seeing the ragtag bunch for the first time.

"My handmaidens and courtiers," Loki said grandly as the girl helped off his cloak. "Is my hair all right?" The old woman bound up a stray strand in the complicated hairstyle she'd knotted up.

Loki felt a surge of misery at this farce he was keeping up, but he was serious about his offspring, whatever it was, knowing its true parentage. His eyes moist, he made his vows and was bound to the coarse man who kept looking over at the armless man as if considering making a run for it.

Then it was done. One more of Loki's hopes was gone, but it didn't matter. He only had less than 6 months to live anyway. A single tear dropped down his cheek.

He wiped it away hastily, but what was apparently a bride's emotion melted his erstwhile father's heart. "There, there, you make a lovely bride," Laufey said. "Come to the dining hall and have drinks with me and some of my men. It's the least I can do."

In a flash, the plan was hatched. For Laufey was known far and wide as a gambler. As they all sat before their cups and what passed for sweetmeats among the jotunns were circulated by servants, Loki only touched the cup to his lips. He trusted no one, for one thing, and secondly he wished his true father to outpace him with drink.

When he judged the moment right, Loki said, "My companions have been entertaining me with some of the legends particular to your people." Laufey nodded politely. "One of them stood out at me because I'm sure it's actual fact."

"Which one is this?" the canny old woman asked.

"The one about the ancient eagle that lives at the top of the highest mountain in Jotunheim. I not only believe that the eagle exists, but that it's possible to catch it and tame it."

There was derisive laughter among the courtiers. "Tame an eagle as old as time? Who would even try to do such a thing?" they scoffed.

"Forgive my wife," Angrboða spoke up, embarrassed. "She doesn't know her place yet."

"But dear," Loki protested. "I'm not saying I could perform such a feat. It was you that told me you could, Angie."

The nickname was passed over by his very nervous new husband, aware that the whole court was looking at him.

"Why don't you accompany him—he's had a few pints of ale," Loki suggested, nodding to the armless man. As they readied their outdoors garments, the old woman slipped several nooses of thread into the armless man's traveling cloak. The blind man went out to point the direction they should go, and the new husband was thrown far into the distance, with the young man throwing himself immediately after.

In no time at all, the two men were back with a wondrous bird with golden feathers, whose foot had been hooked to a dazed Angrboða's wrist, while another thread had been slipped around its beak.

"What a marvel!" Laufey exclaimed. "You are a clever one, Loki. Let me hold it—this is truly a pet fit for a king, yes?" The courtiers were also exclaiming over the legendary beast and Loki's magic.

The beast sat quietly on the throne behind Laufey for quite a while. 'It is your wedding day, Loki, and you have given me a wondrous gift and won a bet. What can I do for you," Laufey asked, as any good king would. "Perhaps a trinket that belonged to your mother, who would have so wished to see this day," Laufey specified, evidently thinking an open-ended offer unwise.

"What I long for more than anything is a home," Loki answered with a ring of truth in his voice. "Simply call me your son—or daughter, if you prefer, and I'll not feel so alone on this earth."

"Of course, Loki my daughter, I am pleased that you have come home at last. You are a fine addition to my court," Laufey said with emotion, reaching for Loki's hand and squeezing it. "We're not a bunch of poseurs like them over there in Asgard. Jotunns know what truly matters in life."

"Thank you, my father. That means the world to hear," Loki said, sure that the entire room had indeed heard the crucial exchange. A few of the ladies sniffled.

They celebrated well into the evening and then finally took their leave. All except the little finger, that is. The girl left her thieving digit behind to undo the special knots keeping the eagle tame and still. The next day, Laufey was sitting down to breakfast when he saw the eagle yawning next to him.

"Are you ready for a morsel? You're eating at a king's table from now on," Laufey said to the bird.

The king's men found him pecked to death by the sharp beak that had also shattered a pane of glass so the bird could return to its home since time immemorial. There was no way to lay the blame directly upon Loki. But what was exceedingly direct was the line of succession. Loki was immediately crowned sovereign.

By evening, the armless man had conveyed all of the belongings from the farmhouse along with Loki, his husband and his four friends.

"How do you like your extension?" Loki inquired of his totally overwhelmed husband. "That wing over there will be yours, is that clear? Meaning you keep your hounds and your pigs and your coarse friends in that area only, understood?"

Angrboða seemed only too glad to have half a castle in between himself and his new wife.

"You can, of course, come to my area of the castle when invited, Angie," Loki added in a seductive tone.

Muttering something under his breath, the father of Loki's child stalked off.

There wasn't much for the king of a backwater to do, it turned out. People were more engaged in fighting the elements than each other. Loki mediated a few cattle-stealing complaints and went back to feeling uncomfortable and sick.

One day he gave into his hankering to see Frigga, the only mother he'd ever known. The fact that he wasn't going to survive it didn't make the great unknown of childbirth any less frightening. And so he devised a way to reach out to his mother without opening the door to the entire kingdom of Asgard.

Loki had the old woman make a bridge out of thread. Thrown by the armless man, who was guided by the perfect aim of the blind man, this bridge unfurled itself right before Frigga when she was walking in her private garden. The finger proffered a note:

"Please come, mother. I'm so alone, and it's almost my seventh month. I mean you no harm. Send me back a letter, at least, so I can feel you close. Yours, Loki."

As he had hoped, his mother was as dauntless as ever, and she opted to come on the bridge straight away. Frigga stood there at the edge of the bridge closest to the castle in Jotunheim. "Loki," she said, holding out her arms. "Let me come to you."

"I don't want you to anger Father for my sake," Loki said from across the brief gap separating him from Frigga. He saw the emotion in his mother's face that he still called Odin "father." "I am so happy to see you," he said with a little sob.

Then Loki let himself be looked at: a swollen-faced woman with child who was wearing the finery of a queen.

"My darling Loki, I am filled with joy to see you," Frigga said.

They wept together as two foolish women. It felt so good. "Mother, I'm going to die," Loki said suddenly. "I know not if my time will come early, so I am very glad to have been able to say goodbye."

"What do you mean? Are you ill? You seem very well," Frigga protested.

"It's been foretold. These visions have been with me constantly for years." He knew his mother to have great respect for portents, but she was shaking her head.

"No my son, my daughter, no. I won't allow it. You will have the best care Asgard can provide, if you will accept it," Frigga declared.

The ruler of a frozen kingdom set his jaw. "No, mother. I make my own way. You should know that by now. This is my fate. I'll thank you not to interfere with that again." The loss of Thor's love hung hotly in the space between them.

Frigga looked like she was about to say something and then thought better of it. "Loki, my dearest, at the very least know that you are not alone. I will come as often as you let me, and your father will not try to stop me. Until the next time." His mother made as if to leave and then turned back. "Take it from a woman who knows such things—you will carry through your ninth month. I do hope you have help."

As in many things, his mother was right. Loki did carry his pregnancy to term and he became very ill from it. When he couldn't get up to go to the edge of the bridge and see his mother, she sent calming draughts that did something to make him feel like a person and less like a poisonous cake baking slowly.

With his four friends the court never felt lonely. They comrades had plenty of courtiers' secret treasures picked through by the girl's extra finger. The blind man told Loki about what the gardens looked like in Asgard that time of year. The blind man also looked into his hat and saw what items would sell well in Loki's business that was still thriving in the land of the black dwarves. The armless man threw himself and goods to Loki's business in Svartalfheim, and then brought back a sack of goods strapped to his back. A few times he threw back some of the misfits so that they could visit with Loki and cheer him from his obsession with impending death.

It was odd. Loki knew himself to be doomed, but he was grateful for these two colonies of rejects who defended him fiercely as if he sat on the throne for their sakes. It was strange having so many loyal followers in an otherwise loveless existence, but Loki was discovering that the people he knew through Thor were each more loyal to their idea of what was good, than to Thor or the Allfather. Whereas Loki's band of pickpockets and cripples put friendship over all else, including honesty or honor. To recompense their kindness, the sovereign was setting aside riches for each of them when the time came.

Finally, his time did come. The last thing he would ever think was a shock at how much blood was flowing out from his body, and how this was the exact replica of his many times re-dreamed vision, in which he was seeing himself as if from outside. The dark hair on the pillow, the mouth open as if to speak but not finding the words. He was dying. Everything went black.

All of his friends were by the bedside. The blind man pulled down his hat and helped find where the thing was caught. The finger helped loosen the cord, the armless man helped draw the creature out and the old woman sewed him up again so the blood stopped. They sat there, very satisfied, and watched their dear friend live.

When Loki woke up, his eyes were blinded by the light. He felt a big hand on his hair. "Thor?" he gasped in joy. The last part of his vision. He must be in Valhalla, but it was all worth it for this. "Thor."

"No, my queen," a different voice said. Then Loki realized it was a foot stroking his hair.

"I'm alive?" he cried in disappointment. Then he had a vain hope. "Was he here? Did he come? While I was sleeping?"

"No milady. We've all of us kept watch with you this whole time," the old woman said in a gentle voice. "You'll be very well in a trice, you'll see."

With all hope gone, Loki lay there too weak to move. "I want to see it."

No one corrected the pronoun. Sometimes the only satisfaction to be had from life is knowing you were right (but why not about Thor?).

The old woman brought in the wolf pup wrapped in a blanket. "It could have been worse," she said.

"I'm sure it could have," Loki agreed. He took the pup, which at least was a normal-looking little wolf, with everything in its right place. "Fenrir. That will be its name. Let's keep it around for a little while, until it starts to show signs of not wanting to be pent up in this court."

Abruptly, Jotunheim was much too small for Loki, and his destiny stretched much too long. Perhaps he could have married Thor and survived.

He cried for a long time. Halfway through he discovered he could turn back into a man again, and his sobs took on a deeper note.

"Did he ask about me?" he inquired of the blind man. "I know you all must have gotten word to my mother that I didn't die."

"I can't hear what's going on, you know," the old man said apologetically. "But I did see this parcel left outside the castle with your name on it."

The label was was unmistakably in Thor's hand. Half hoping it was a deadly trick, Loki grabbed the package and tore off the wrappings.

The gift was a set of carved horses on wheels. Loki remembered arguing with his brother over them because their games with these toys were one of the first signs that Loki had his mother's gift with magic. As a small boy he could make his horse, the green one, go faster than the red one belonging to Thor. How many battles they'd fought with their play horses! How many adventures they'd gone on.

Loki hadn't thought about these for years, but somehow Thor had found them and taken the trouble to send them over. Suddenly the mother of Fenrir wished he'd been able to engender something like a real child that could be worthy of this thoughtful gesture.

"Shall i put them in the nursery?" the girl asked.

"No. I'll rest now. Alone." Loki only wanted to give in to the shameful desire to fall asleep with Thor's gift, but he guiltily realized he might have wounded his friends' feelings. "Thank you, all of you. If I had to wake up not dead, I'm glad to wake up to such giving companions."

His friends filed out and Loki fell asleep after using his magic to race the horses around the coverlet. This time the red and green horses finished the race together.


	5. Chapter 5

After he realized that the letters from his mother wouldn't stop, Loki ordered that the bridge be unrolled. He stood there as a man once more and let his mother look at him closely, something he had avoided in his castle for the most part since the Fenrir's birth.

"You look awful," Frigga stated after a moment. "You expected to bear something far worse than a little wolf, so can't you take comfort in your vision of death upon birthing a monster not being true?"

Frigga was the last person to tell about the secret Thor part of his vision, the only part he ever cared about. He shrugged. "There is plenty to do. Now that I am strong again there are various improvement projects underway to make Jotunheim less of an uncomfortable backwater. We possess some minerals on my land that the land of the black dwarves prizes very highly. There are things to get me out of bed in the morning."

His mother appeared to consider something before speaking. "Your father would be unhappy if he knew I told you this, but I would like to ask you for a favor."

"A favor?" he was intrigued. Their visits always carefully avoided matters of state. "What is the matter, Mother?"

"With the destruction of the Bifrost we have been completely cut off from all the other realms. It puts us in a weak position with no trade and no news except through you."

Loki hadn't been aware of saying anything of import, but for a kingdom with no commerce to other realms his talk about his merchant's interests must have meant something.

"Mother, I feel terrible that you haven't mentioned this before now. I could have gotten any news you wanted, or any goods as well. What are you lacking?"

"A Bifrost," she said succinctly. "Or something like it." And the clever woman gave her plan about making a permanent version of the bridge the old woman had made for their visits. When she was done she looked at Loki anxiously as he sat there silently. "You'll find that there is no advantage to keeping Asgard week when we can be a strong friend."

The plan meant exactly one thing to Loki. "I have a condition," he said.

His mother clasped her hands in relief. "I knew you still cared about Asgard," she cried. Then her eyes narrowed, remembering who she was talking to. "What sort of condition? If it's a great sum of money you want, we'll have to involve your father."

"It won't cost anyone anything," Loki assured her. "It's only that Thor must come here to obtain the bridge from me."

As he had hoped, his mother was too desperate for the bridge to risk giving her views on the idea. He went back to his castle with a lighter step than he would have imagined when he forced himself out of bed that morning.

The girl's finger was put to work daubing the thread with a resin that would dry into a substance strong enough to bear hooves from the horse traffic. The old woman began knotting up a new bridge to connect Asgard to the other realms. The blind man and the armless man got to work throwing themselves to all the points where the bridge would need to be affixed.

The real work went on in Loki's dressing room. The pickpocket girl herself helped Loki in and out of every splendid set of women's clothes he owned. "Do you think this makes me look more fetching than the last outfit?" the sovereign asked the thief again and again.

"Milady, you are a beauty such as I have never seen. Anyone that has eyes to see will admire you," she said.

At last the bridge was finished and, on the assigned morning, Loki was waiting in his throne room for his audience with Thor.

He saw a figure fly by the window. Loki was seized with grief that Thor could have flown with Mjolnir at any time to visit, but had not. Shortly, Thor was bowing before him, the hammer that had conveyed him to Jotunheim laid politely on the ground.

"Your highness," he said. Only then did the visitor seem to realize that Loki was in women's clothing because he was, at that moment, a woman. "I, er, that is, Asgard is much pleased with your offer of a bridge. Father, that is, the Allfather, wished me convey his assurance that this day will not be forgotten."

"Indeed I hope not," Loki said, aware that Thor wasn't sure where to lay his eyes on the richly attired and voluptuous figure on the throne situated high above the floor. "My gentlewoman will give you the bridge, and my two men-in-waiting will help you assemble it."

Loki was gratified to note that Thor was somewhat confused and not necessarily happy that his audience had been cut short.

"Queen Loki, you have my personal thanks," Thor said, bowing deeply, but not quite deeply enough. The old woman handed the ball of knotted hread to Thor, but Loki sent a waft of magic that made it drop from the gnarled hand and out of his brother's reach.

"It's very slippery! You must catch it—the resin it's coated with is very costly," Loki advised.

The ball rolled around the throne room as if it had a mind of its own. Thor, the emissary from a kingdom in great need of a bridge, scampered around after it. Finally, he pounced upon the ball of thread and looked up in triumph. The spot where Loki had chosen to make the ball go still was right in front of where Thor would have a clear sight of Loki's womanly lap, unobscured for the occasion by any underclothing.

Thor dropped the ball of thread again and bumbled after it, a look of shock on his face. He bowed once more—with his eyes closed—and backed out of the throne room.

That look of oafish surprise was worth more than any treasure, and omething Loki never thought he would see again. It was enough to hold him over for a couple of months. During this time Asgard began using its new bridge, and Loki received several shipments of gifts in thanks. With a cart full of the sort of fresh vegetables that were hard to come by in Jotunheim came a note from the Allfather, offering to make a regular trade between the two kingdoms for some of the metalware Loki traded in over in Svartalfheim.

From his mother, Loki received a box of his old books and an invitation to meet on the bridge for one of their tête-à-têtes.

Loki distributed the gifts with a heavy heart. There was nothing from Thor.

"Oh look, this must be one more from your mother," the girl said, opening the last box. "It's clothes, and very fine stuff, too."

"Have it brought to my rooms," Loki said distantly.

Later that night he was watching the girl hang up garment after undergarment. "Where did those come from?" he demanded.

"It's the clothes from your mother," the pickpocket said. "From all this you'd think Asgardians don't believe we have the custom of wearing underthings in Jotunheim."

Loki pawed through the hamper and found no note. He wasn't sure whether to interpret this gift from Thor as an appreciation of his body or a desire to cover it up, but he wore the silken underthings as the only pleasurable reminder that he had a body.

It was more practical to go about the court in his male form, so usually Loki ruled over the kingdom a man. It was also good for endless fun at the expense of his husband.

Angrboða knew exactly who Loki was the first time they shared a bed, but that time, and for the next nine months, Loki was female. The giant didn't know what to do with himself when Loki breezed by in his kingly garb saying, "Hello, dear. Send Fenrir to me if you happen to see him, my darling."

Their little wolf was the only connection the two of them had, and it didn't seem to be much. One day, Loki heard a tremendous commotion in one of the parlors. He heard Angrboða saying, "I won't have him turned into a lapdog, and that's a fact! You'll keep your ribbons and laces away from him. A wild thing should remain wild." Everyone turned and saw the king. They all made some sort of reverence, everyone except Angrboða, who looked at Loki with challenging eyes.

Someone had been trying to bedeck Fenrir as if he were a doll and not a growing wolf. The animal looked to his mother, whom he seemed to understand the best.

"Well spoke, husband," Loki said. "Fenrir, I had trusted you to be able to defend yourself against a ribbon. Henceforward, you will be spending more time outdoors with your father and his men, or when I have a moment, with me. It's far more interesting outside this hothouse of a court, anyway." Loki saw the message received by his husband's eyes.

That night, for the first time since their coupling in Svartalfheim, Loki went to sleep without a lock and a guard at his bedchamber. Angrboða found a woman with her hair all undone and nothing on other than a sheet. They had each other wildly and without sentiment, making a heat with the only person handy who understood how ill they belonged in the castle walls themselves.

Her husband didn't kiss her, but he did hold her face in his hands and let the blazing gaze fulminate him with all its venom. "You're a beauty, Loki," he said, as if he wished for anything it weren't true. Then he was gone.

Loki didn't feel like company very often, and so occasionally he would hear his husband steal through the cold hallway and stand a moment turning the doorknob in hopes of being let in. During waking hours Loki found it quite humiliating that his wedded husband would rather die than admit they occasionally shared a bed, and he made Angrboða pay when he could.

In the middle of a meal, Loki would lean over wearing his slim man's suit and say, "Darling, I really wish you would do something about those corns on your feet. In the middle of the night it sounds like the clattering of hooves when you come into my bedchamber. What on earth were you looking for last night?"

The courtiers were struggling to keep neutral expressions as their sovereign's consort looked red-faced at the man next to him. "I was looking for my pipe. You said you had gotten me some of that tobacco I like, and I fancied a smoke."

"Your pipe! Of course," Loki exclaimed. "I have it right here, filled with your favorite mixture." He sat there digging in the front pocket of his close-cut breeches while the court hid their smiles. "Here's your pipe. It's still warm, even," he said as his husband snatched it. "Would you like me to light it for you? I have a flint in here somewhere," he started digging around in the crotch of his form-fitting outfit.

Angrboða glared at him and might stay away for a few days. But eventually he would give in and they would have a roll on fine sheets totally bereft of love. Naturally, Loki took all the precautions, not wanting to see what worse than a wolf could come out of his womb.

Eventually Fenrir ran off into the forest and came back only rarely. Loki thought he was resigned to the routines of his life. Though he knew them to be false, his visions gave him no rest. Death, which had been something to be avoided, now was his only hope to see Thor. He had the dream again and again, and always when he was at the point of death, Thor was there, holding his hand and weeping. His existence meant so little to him that Loki began to think of that one moment of intimacy as a good trade for his life.

He began replacing his mixture to prevent pregnancy with one to encourage it. Sure enough, one of his nights with Angrboða bore fruit.

"You're what? It's not mine!" his husband had tried to say.

"Who else would it be, you nitwit? The day I take a lover you'll be the first to know. Do you honestly think if I could have someone else I'd still let you touch me?"

"We might have a son," Angrboða said, warming to the idea.

"Or we might have something else entirely." Loki's visions certainly pointed in that direction. His two ladies-in-waiting woke him up many times from nightmares that were far worse than the last pregnancy.

Congratulations in the court were cautious, what with the precedent of Fenrir, who had become rather prone to biting people now that he was a full-grown wolf.

Frigga was now a frequent visitor at the castle, bringing herbs and other medicaments to soothe Loki's sickness. Loki had withdrawn to a part of himself that waited only to reach the point of death. Nothing else mattered.

This time, his mother was by his side in his final days, and he was very glad of it. The pain was a hundred times worse than the last time and it lasted for days. His suffering was so terrible that Angrboða would stay in the room for hours, just to give Loki his favorite target to scream at. The sorcerers in both Jotunheim and Asgard were called upon for help, and Odin sent his own personal physician to try and hasten the end of Loki's labor.

In between screams and oaths, Loki had to fight back a smile. His body couldn't stand much more of this. He was sure to die. Thor had never felt so close.

Once more, he saw himself as if from the outside. The white, drawn face, the lips parted, and the ocean of blood racing out from beneath Loki's body as if running away from this body that it knew couldn't be saved.

Loki dreamt of sunshine, and then gradually realized that he was alive and awake and merely breathing in the smell of sunshine. It was the smell of Thor.

"You came," he croaked with his eyes still closed.

"I never left, my dear one," his mother said. His eyes flew open. It was the smell of Asgard that hung about his mother. He looked around the room. There was no Thor.

He sobbed with abandon, as only someone whose body had gone through a great torment weeps without caring about how they look. "What is it?" he finally brought himself to ask.

"Rest now," his mother said, and he drank without protest the sleeping draught she offered.

When he awoke, it was the middle of the night and his mother was asleep in a chair. Loki got up and stole into the nursery. The serpent was all coiled up in a docile knot—no doubt a knot furnished by the old woman. There should have been nothing so much worse about having borne a serpent than a wolf, but the idea of having a reptile growing inside of him all this time made Loki vomit in one of the miniature sets of royal plates no one had thought to clear away.

The creature looked back at him as pure evil, as the embodiment of its mother's decision to bring a monster into the world as a way of regaining love.

Loki stood there taking in the end of his hopes, until he heard a familiar sound like hooves.

Angrboða came silently to Loki's side and put his arm around the woman, who was surprised to remember she was too weak to be standing. Loki relaxed into the arm that offered no comfort, only a mute witness, and then kept melting until he almost reached the floor.

Angrboða caught her and carried her back to her bed. "Found her wandering," the Frost Giant said to Frigga. "I don't know what she's saying. Is it a language of your people?"

Frigga listened for a moment. "He's saying 'Jörmungandr.' It's the name he wishes to give it, I think."

The next two years were a dark time in Jotunheim. The kingdom itself was growing wealthier thanks to Loki's skill with trade, but the castle itself was steeped in melancholy. It wasn't for want of music or revelry. Musicians from Asgard had come into fashion among the jotunns, while the Asgardians were fascinated by the traditional dances of Jotunheim, which were accomplished with much jumping and stamping and grunting.

The cross-breeding of these two customs should have had Loki in stitches. He attended everything required of him, but there was a light gone from his eyes. Still, sitting there pretending to enjoy the banquets was better than facing what lay in wait for him at night.

The visions were all-consuming, and Loki cheered himself that he must merely be mad to think that Thor would ever speak to him again. Occasionally, one of the realms would invite the sovereigns from the other for some occasion, and Loki merely sat in his narrow dark suit and took no more interest in Thor and his little wife than he did of anything else.

Odin never set foot in Jotunheim, but one morning when Loki was taking a stroll on the bridge and considering throwing himself off, he saw a man walking up to him. Under the hood there as only one eye. Odin. Unaccompanied.

"You can take your hand off your sword, Loki, I have no interest in killing an ally."

Loki's hand dropped to his side. "Some ally. I'm making you pay through the nose for all your weaponry."

Odin laughed shortly. "And I'm glad to do it. You've made a good ruler of yourself, Loki. And for you to rule so well in the midst of your sorrow is quite a feat."

"If you've come to gloat I do wish you'd make an appointment through my secretary."

Odin's eye widened. "No one would wish the pain of childlessness on anyone. Thor has also not been lucky in this respect."

"Has his wife given birth to a dragon or something and you've hushed it up?" Loki snapped.

"No, but I think your pain is not dissimilar with your brother's."

Loki felt vaguely guilty that his agony was mistaken for something as healthful as desiring a normal child. He'd go on bearing monsters if it got him closer to his true desire—Thor.

"Regardless, I'll get over it soon enough," he drew himself up very straight. "I'm nothing if not resilient, as you know, Father."

Odin seemed moved by the title, ignoring the tone in which it was said. "That you are, Loki. I have never disparaged your many gifts."

Loki sniffed.

"I wanted to come upon you when we were alone so we could talk as two men, unseparated by minstrels and servants and all the other trappings that tend to grate upon one who is heavy with sorrow. If there is a way I can help lessen your pain, please let me know. Perhaps there is an old wise woman in Asgard who can heal what prevents you having a son."

Loki nodded quietly, secure in the knowledge that nothing would keep him from bearing repulsive things. "The problem is more that I've gone mad," he said conversationally.

"A madman may go into business competing with the black dwarves, but only a sane man can prosper in it," Odin was saying, but then Loki interrupted.

"There is something you can do, Father!"

"And what would that be?" Odin answered, obviously not wishing to agree outright.

"I've heard you have some liquor with magical properties. The Rhymester's Share. Maybe that would help me at least understand my terrible fate better."

"That stuff!" Odin exclaimed. "There's probably none left. I used to sneak a glass from time to time because it will get you drunk faster than anything, but the next morning you'll pay the price."

Loki studied his father's face to see if he was referring to lingering visions, but he appeared to be referring to a standard hangover.

"Why would you want that of all things? You should have grown out of your habit of trying to drink your sorrows away," Odin said with some of his old paternalism.

"You mean you drank it on several occasions and feel nothing—out of the ordinary?" Loki asked, nonplussed.

"What should I feel after drinking a potent brew? I'll have someone dig it out and we'll have some together, Loki. It's merely a strong spirit. Neighboring kings should have a draught between them, every once in a while."

A few days later, the cask arrived in Jotunheim, along with a note. "I'm sorry my son, but whatever was left must have dried up, and the rat that chewed a hole in it must have had hell to pay the next morning."

Loki examined the hole that had appeared in the sie of the cask. He creaked the tap open and nothing came out. With determination, he rinsed a little water through the cask and held a glass under the pale liquid that came out, which tasted just as offensive as the last time. He went back and lay down for his nightly visions, whether they were caused by the Rhymester's Share or incipient madness, he no longer cared.

That night, however, Loki felt unusually good. So good, his sexual appetite came back to him with a vengeance. For the first time, he stole into Angrboða's quarters, and laughed as the blade reached his chest.

"Hardly a way to greet your wife," Loki reprimanded him.

Angrboða took in the long, undone hair and the flimsy nightdress, and after a long moment, found it good reason to lower his sword. Their bodies' long fast had them jouncing on the bed in short order.

"You're going to be all right then?" his husband asked when it was done. It was the closest thing to concern Loki was likely to get.

"We'll see," he sighed contentedly. "This is where you sleep? The king's consort should sleep in something a little better than a root cellar. People will think me dishonorable."

"Woman, you know where the door is if it's not to your taste," Angrboða grumbled and pulled the covers over himself.

Loki returned to his chamber on light feet. Only a few weeks later did he realize that he had never resumed his contraceptive potion because after his last pregnancy he didn't want to get within a foot of another human again.

"What are you about, woman?" Angrboða was the one brave enough to ask when Loki was found using a hatchet to chop up the cask in the throne room. Other people from the court shrunk in the background.

"This stuff made me seek you out in my fertile time!" Loki spat at the flames he had just cast upon the cask that may or may not have housed the Rhymester's Share."What will it be this time? An elephant? A tiger? I know, a bilgesnipe. Tell Jörmungandr he's going to have to share the sunbeam on the corridor he likes to warm himself in."

The sight of his witless husband trying to put one and one together enraged Loki, and he screamed, not caring who heard, "That's right. We've never determined if it was your tainted seed, you oaf, think on that before you go back to acting like you don't know me. I'm the one that bears these abominations on a river of my blood and then has nothing to show for it!"

Loki shrieked until the giant's hand slapped his cheek. "What are you all staring at? Bring some brandy," he shooed off the thieving girl. "You there," he said to the old woman, "Bring her cloak-do you want her to catch cold in her condition? If everyone else isn't gone the next time I blink my eyes, I'll turn the rest of you useless lot into the cold."

Angrboða swept up a hysterical Loki in his arms and waited for his wife to have a thimble of brandy. A fatalism overtook Loki that prevented him from trying to dislodge this extra life. He was immediately and constantly sick for the remainder of the gestation. This time, Angrboða had to take over some of the ruling duties. Loki's body not only suffered during his confinement, but his mind left him at points as well. He frequently talked to things that weren't there, and everywhere he saw monsters, monsters, monsters.

His time came early on this occasion, and Loki watched himself from afar as the blood ran out of his body and his pale form lay anchored to the pillow in a cascade of dark hair. He didn't ask for Thor, because he expected no joy to ever reach him again.

When he woke up, however, he felt a dull resignation at being alive, and then heard the words:

"Do you want to see her?"

The pickpocket girl was asking him. Angrboða was there, and the old woman and his mother, and all his friends. They brought in the baby girl bundled up in a blanket. Everyone was talking happily about this normal birth. He noticed that his mother's smile did not reach her eyes. "Could you leave my mother and me alone with the babe? We'd like to pick out a name."

"What's wrong with her?" Loki demanded and then he squinted his eyes. Throughout this last confinement he'd hallucinated all kinds of spirits crowding around him. When he looked closely, he could see phantasms crowding around the baby, who cooed and reached out to the most monstrous apparitions, petting them on the head like dogs.

"You have the second sight at least as well as I," Frigg said sadly. "This one is the most dangerous of the three—no one wants all manner of spirits running through their home."

Loki chose to do nothing until it became clear that the little girl was growing at an alarming rate. He sent out a call for the old dwarf, the one who had introduced him to the Rhymester's Share.

"Is there anything to be done for her?" Loki asked of the girl who already appeared to be about 7 years old.

"All of your offspring are rather troublesome. I hear that the serpent and the wolf like biting people," the old dwarf said. "Perhaps we should enlist the help of your father. Odin has his own store of beast and goblins he doesn't know what to do with."

And so the little girl, or Hel, as she came to be known, was put in charge of underworld spirits. Jörmungandr was cast into the wide ocean, and Fenrir, who Loki still had a soft spot for, was sent back into the icy forests with the order to stop biting people.

"Can't you help me?" Loki said desperately to the old dwarf.

"I gave two of your children a better living situation, what more do you wish from me?" the dwarf said.

"Why could my father drink a whole cask of the Rhymester's Share and feel nothing other than drunk? Why do my visions only come true in part? Will I ever have Thor's love? Why can't I bear a normal child?"

"Those are too many questions, my son. All I can tell you is that the truth comes to all of us, but only some are brave enough to follow."

The little dwarf disappeared. Loki went back to ruling his kingdom and waiting for the truth to show up.


	6. Chapter 6

During this time, Loki and his husband came to one of their silent understandings: they would not share a bed again. What came out of these relations was far too high a cost to pay for convenience. Angrboða would find his satisfactions quietly outside the castle, and Loki saw this move as the greatest kindness he could expect from his spouse.

The thick skin of despair grew even more tangibly around the monarch of Jotunheim, and Loki didn't consider roping in one of his subjects to try and hack through the sad fate separating him from others. Instead, he took up his old custom of riding.

Many afternoons, Loki rode out alone on his horse, Svaðilfari. Sometimes he would seek out Fenrir and they would have races in the snow. It was a pure, lonely kind of peace the king found in his resolved solitude. At the very least, no new monster would come of it. After all, since his last pregnancy Loki had sworn off his womanhood and had been going about as a male.

"You're what?" Angrboða said when Loki cornered him in the castle. "It's not mine!"

"I'm well aware it's not yours. As I've not worn a petticoat since we brought our last monster into the world, I'm as surprised as you are. My horse can't be brought to explain how it happened."

A slow shock washed over his husband's face. "Even you wouldn't—with a—"

Loki slapped him. "Idiot. If you keep insulting me I'll take back the boon I was going to offer you."

Angrboða was quicker on the uptake this time. "This unnatural conception goes to show that all the monsters and whatnot aren't my fault," he said with a greater relief than Loki would have expected.

"Yes, most likely," the king said in a businesslike tone. "I'd like to offer you a way out of this sham of a marriage since I have apparently committed adultery by some definition. I would like your word that you will breathe not a word of this calamity to anyone. In exchange, what lands would you like to extort from me?"

"The farmhouse and a few cattle will do!" Angrboða said gleefully, rushing off down the corridor. He looked back and saw Loki carelessly dressed in a frock and looking unmistakably pale and ill. The simple farmer had seen these signs three times before and knew better than anyone what a long, miserable journey awaited this spouse he had never loved.

The giant strode back. "I wish you an easier time of it, just once," he said quietly. Loki shed a tear and it was briefly wiped away by the huge thumb before he saw the back of his former husband and then nothing.

No one was surprised that the king's bumpkin of a husband had finally drifted away from the court where he felt so uncomfortable. The jotunns cared little for him, and only sought to cheer their serious-faced monarch with whatever revelry they could bring to the castle. And so Loki kept the doors open far into the pregnancy that no one except his very closest friends knew about.

When he first realized that a king's exceptionally vigorous ride was the only explanation for his pregnant state, Loki had shut himself up in his room to weep on the lap of the old woman, his most trusted advisor.

"There, there, my king. I won't let anything happen to you," she said, stroking the hair.

"I can't bear anyone from Asgard finding out about this. They'll think I've stooped to the level of a sideshow from one of the taverns in Svartalfheim."

"But my dear, are you not versed in the magic arts? With some special clothing I can whip up for you, together we can hide your state for as long as need be."

Loki sat up and kissed the weathered cheek. "I'm sure I can create a glamour to keep people from looking at me too closely."

"And your famous moods will do the rest," the old woman said fondly. "Let's tell no one else until we see what comes of it."

Neither expected Loki to bear anything to be proud of. His illness was oddly less this time, but perhaps that was because the king stayed outwardly a king and thus did not have to gestate his shame in public.

The old woman sewed and sewed, keeping him in garments that made his bulk invisible to everyone else. Loki ruled and hoped for the pain to be slight.

In the end, they had to bring the rest of their circle of friends into the secret. Loki watched himself from afar as the blood on the bed made its expected appearance, an old friend by now. He watched his four friends struggle to remove the thing and only felt sorry that their exertions were so great on behalf of someone who had long since stopped caring about life.

Eventually it was extracted and stood there on shaky legs. This time, Loki was glad Thor would not come.

"You shall be Sleipnir," he whispered. "Can one of you spirit him to the stables? There is surely a mare able to nurse it."

"Yes milady," the pickpocket girl said, scooping the foal up in her arms. "Don't worry about a thing."

Loki lay in bed for about a day, hoping that his swollen body would go back to normal soon so he could leave off the glamour and go back to being the king everyone liked very well but no one loved.

That night he had a dream. Usually his familiar false visions crowded into his mind the moment he closed his eyes, but this night Loki saw something equally vivid but completely new.

He sat up in his simple nightdress and leapt out of bed with a surprising vigor. "What are you looking for? Let me help you," the old woman said from the chair where she had been keeping vigil.

"My boots!" Loki exclaimed. "Where are my boots?"

"Are you going to the stable to see Sleipnir? You really should stay in bed, but if you must, let me dress you," the old woman urged.

"There's no time. Give me your cloak and your clogs," he ordered the thieving girl, who had just showed up to see what the commotion was about. Loki shrugged on the plain hooded garment and allowed himself to be thrown by the armless man to a secret entrance to the Asgardian castle only the royal family knew about, and which he hoped had not been barred up.

Loki incinerated the lock with one of his charms and, sidestepping the magics guarding the door, he slipped in.

The sound of Thor's roaring made his heart stop even before he raced to the room he'd seen in his dream. His brother's wife must have just expired a moment ago, because Loki stood there in the doorway and saw the scene, this time outside his eyes: the dark hair bleeding across the pillow, her mouth seemingly frozen in the act of speech, the mattress saturated with blood. Her chest rose no more, and one of the servants made as if to draw Thor away, but he shook them off and stood there, sobbing with the small hand engulfed in his large one.

Loki had watched this unfold many times in his dreams, but this time, watching the completion of it with Thor's sorrow made him see that the greatest sufferer in this play was Thor, not himself. The jotunn king felt terrible for having barged in to what was a family tragedy, and only then asked himself why he had been motivated to be there at all.

After all this time, Loki had neither love nor hate for the Midgardian queen Thor had chosen—he'd forgotten the simple thing had finally managed to conceive, being much preoccupied by his own woes. Like all mortals, she had found Asgard to be an inhospitable climate. She aged far more quickly than they, and at some point, Loki supposed that the pregnancy Thor must have desired with all his heart had become the surest way to kill his wife. Loki knew only too well that fate liked to deal out inconvenient pregnancies as a way to proving some inscrutable point, and he was unable to take any pleasure from it.

The news must have just reached his mother and father, because voices could be heard from far off. Loki was considering leaving rather than causing a fuss with his presence at that dark moment, when he heard it.

The child crying. Because his own offspring were monsters, and thus more or less independent after birth, Loki didn't even think about whether his brother's baby had survived. But the child was crying from some nearby room with a raucous new life's disregard for tragedy.

Loki saw no relief in Thor's face, obviously too caught up with mourning his wife that he had yet to see the heir as a consolation. A couple of the servants went scurrying out to try and quiet it, but Loki's magic had him already in the room when they got there.

The hood was partially obscuring his face, a glamour was in place around him, but even when the women came closer, Loki was confident that none of these Asgardians had ever seen him up close as a woman. "Thank goodness someone sent for a nursemaid," a servant said, watching the baby suckle contentedly. "You'll tell us if you need anything." And they raced out to rejoin the party whose murmuring was being easily drowned out by Thor's cries of grief.

Lucky he had just had a beastie, and thus his milk could be of use for once, Loki considered as he watched the human feed. After all his tragedies, the baby seemed like the most exotic creature imaginable. He stayed there by the fire and everyone was only too glad to leave the infant in someone's care so they could tend to the crashing and howling that was going on elsewhere in the castle as Thor grieved.

Loki felt a sense of peace for the first time in years. He was doing perhaps the only thing to comfort his brother, though Thor wouldn't feel it as yet. And yes, after all his frustrated attempts to get closer to Thor by pregnancy, it did feel good to have a warm human baby connecting them, in a way, after all.

A full day had passed with the new nursemaid quietly fulfilling her duties in the snug chamber. It was late in the night once more, and Loki was drowsing himself to the rhythmic pull upon his body. Suddenly he felt he was being observed. Slowly, he turned and saw Thor watching his new son feeding. He watched the relief begin flooding his brother's features still darkened with grief. This one life would survive. The eyes were still full of pain as Thor walked slowly over to the hearth and sat there, watching the simple act.

The child affixed itself to the other side, and Loki made a move to cover the bosom.

"Leave it," Thor whispered. "Please."

Thor watched the conclusion of the feeding session and then Loki pulled the bell for the child to be removed to its splendid crib. Thor kissed its forehead, and then when they were alone again, sat once more by the hearth, motioning for the nursemaid to retake her chair. He laid his head in her lap, and she tentatively ran her hands through his hair until he began to sob quietly. He moved up to clasp around her waist and cry into her bosom.

When the robe opened slightly, he opened his mouth at the same time as she directed his head upwards. The rival king watched his brother derive some small comfort from the act of feeding, but Loki was too ecstatic and aroused by the drag upon his chest not to be aware of the perfect fulfillment it gave him. He felt terribly guilty, however, to be profiting so from his brother's loss, though not guilty enough to stop.

Thor was about to switch to the other side and then paused. "I don't want to take it all from the babe."

"There will be enough. Drink," the nursemaid said, sure that the thaw he'd felt in his bones the second Thor touched him was causing an upswell of as much nourishment as everyone would need to thrive.

Finally Thor was finished, and he sat there admiring the two veined globes. "You're very beautiful," Thor said, first to his chest, and then the face. "I am so happy to know my son is receiving such gentle care."

"My liege," Loki said, making a reverence with his bodice still all undone.

Thor stopped at the door and gave one last look of muddled sorrow, exhaustion, and…. admiration, and then he was gone.

And so it continued for several more evenings; sometimes, Thor came bearing the child in his arms. One night, he set him in the cradle and then unlaced Loki's bodice himself. He carefully drew out the breasts and then settled his son for his feeding. In this one small room, everything was as it should be in the world.

They sat by the fire, Loki staring at the flames while he was being examined. He felt the shock go through his brother at some point, but Thor chose to wait until his son had been fed.

The servant was finally rung for and Loki and Thor faced each other.

"You are so beautiful as a woman, more beautiful than I could have ever imagined, that I never thought this could be you. That I could touch you as this," Thor said with some nostalgia. "Seeing you across a crowded court underneath some headdress was not to see you at all." Then he lashed out. "Did you kill her? Are you here to poison my son as well?"

Loki let all the sorrow of the last few years rise to his face. "I have visions. Some of these visions convinced me I should not marry you, which turned out not to be a possibility anyway," he said bitterly. "And the one I had the other night said that I could be, should be of some use to you in your time of need. You have fed as well," Thor reddened, "Do you feel at all ill?"

"No," he admitted and loosened the bodice once more to bury himself in its contents. "I don't know what I feel. I'll never feel anything again."

"Ssh," Loki said, giving the animal comfort Thor needed. Now that he knew it was his brother, Thor realized he did not have to be deferential. He drew greedily until it hurt, and Loki said nothing in protest.

"How long will you stay?" Thor asked when Loki at last wiped his mouth.

"As long as you need me and no longer. My kingdom is well cared for by a few trusted friends. They can get me a message in secret if need be."

Thor nodded with what Loki had always considered to be stupidity, but now he realized it was trust. Or a need so deep it turned to trust somewhere.

Thor brought back a splendid embroidered shawl to wrap around his son as he fed. Then he disappeared for several days. Actually almost two weeks. Loki gave in to the simple rhythm of his temporary life with its solitude and quiet and the plain food servants ate, sent to him in more abundance to ensure plentiful production.

He assumed Thor found it inconvenient or even unpalatable to continue their relations, and so any reason to put off his return to the cold of Jotunheim was enough. No one looked upon Loki with desire there, certainly not his former husband, nor the courtiers who were afraid of him. But Thor had desired him even after knowing who he was, albeit briefly. But then, Loki had always disliked his brother's perceptions much less than the way the rest of the world saw him.

His older brother would remain away for long stretches, and then stay the whole night through next to the babe that snuggled contentedly with his nurse. Loki was used to his brother's taciturn ways, but this time he heard all the impotent fury in what Thor didn't say. Whether Thor had loved his wife at first no longer mattered. The marriage had become a trial in the end with the pressure to produce an heir in a race against the Midgardian's mortality. The face that stared into the fire was one unused to happiness.

Now, Thor's blond features said, all that was over, and this child knew none of the anguish that had surrounded his conception or his birth. The little creature cared not for any of it, and the two brothers dwelt in this ignorance and found it a relief.

A small purse of coins was handed to Loki every two weeks. With roughly the same frequency he received letters hurled by his friends in Jotunheim, who'd said he was tending to business matters in Svartalfheim. They told him of any important matters and asking questions that only he could answer. The little finger conveyed his answers back again.

After several months, Loki saw the attitude of the other servants become slightly more deferential. They had supposed that the prince was spending so much time in the nursery because the nurse was providing other services. Strangely, all Loki cared about was that his brother had broken his silence and started talking to him.

"I don't know why I always think that looking at the best side of people makes the worst of them disappear," Thor said suddenly. He felt the inquiring look. "Father is either the wisest man I know, or the only person with enough power to make his version of the world the only one."

Loki barked out a laugh and then shushed the child. "Mother's better," he offered. "Still slippery, but well, I'm glad I've known true affection in my life elsewhere."

"Your husband?" Thor asked incredulously.

"I have no husband," Loki rejoined. "And no, of course not. From my friends."

As he described some of the tricks his wily friends were capable of, Loki realized he'd perhaps not had the worst of it over there in frozen Jotunheim. Thor was eager for something different than the machinations of Asgard.

"Your court sounds fun," he recognized. "Everything here is done Father's way, and you know how that can get. I'm still no more than a child, though I'm entirely a man."

Loki's eyes corroborated that statement. "Not considering how I left, I don't think I could have stood one more minute shut up here in Asgard. You've turned out rather well, all things considering," he whispered.

"I'd like to say you're very little, but your kingdom has prospered," Thor said, his eyes taking note of a different kind of bounty on Loki's person. "You are a beauty, Loki."

He said it as though he wasn't sorry about it. Loki grabbed his brother and kissed him.

"I'm not sorry I did that," he said primly, folding his hands in his lap as Thor goggled at him.

Thor beat a hasty retreat, but Loki wasn't concerned. He knew his brother wouldn't be able to stay away. He never could.

One morning, Thor was there when Loki took the child for a walk in the sun. And so it became their custom to take a little walk in one of the minor gardens, the servants wagging their tongues about this dalliance of the prince's, but conspiring to keep it silent out of a desire to give the bereaved man some comfort after his loss.

One week, there was no purse. Loki thought it an oversight but chose to tease Thor about it when he came for his nightly visit.

"I've not received my wages this fortnight. Have I displeased you with my service in some way, master?"

"I wanted to deliver them personally," Thor replied. "They're right here." He reached to his trousers, but not his pocket.

Loki hastily rung the bell so that the child could be removed. Then, it was as if these several years had not happened, and a younger, less sorrowful pair were discovering each other on some mountaintop.

Thor seduced him, and Loki let himself, as a woman, be wooed. The warm season that had begun returning his suppleness burst into full sun under Thor's capable hands. This was a consummation that had been years in the making, and Loki watched his brother struggle to be courtly when the rest of him wanted too many other things.

To help his brother along, Loki pushed him to the rug and dropped his petticoats on Thor one by one.

Strangely, Thor was looking up at him in alarm. "What is this?"

"It's what you once coveted, brother. Don't worry, I'll school you in what to do with it," Loki said a trifle nervously until he realized what had so surprised Thor, who was exploring the smooth, depilated flesh with a tentative finger. "It's the custom in Svartalfheim; I suppose I got used to the practice," Loki said, guiding the hand now that he knew he was being admired. Thor was very excited by this innovation that had Loki completely exposed and vulnerable to both hand and mouth.

The act was so mutually exciting that that's all they did that evening, Loki's legs wrapped around Thor's head as he examined and submerged himself, surfacing with some hidden self that had been captive inside a king for so long.

Their earlier custom had been for Loki to feign passivity or disinterest, but after so much despair, the younger sibling was ripe and ready to lay back and be taken.

Feeling Thor's manhood once again in his mouth, in his everywhere, he could finally allow himself to show his need. He was no longer holding back any of his thankfulness.

"You like that?" Thor inquired. Loki whimpered. Thor redoubled his fervor, conquering deeper and deeper reaches of his inner territories.

"Right there, yes," Loki urged. Thor's mouth found his chest and this additional rhythm brought Loki wave after wave of satisfaction.

"Did I please you, my sister?" Thor asked, panting.

This novel title was good for a few naughty minutes of kissing. "It will do," Loki said frostily, "Until we can arrange to do it again on a horse." Then he paled, thinking that would be very unwise, given his last beast.

"This makes you look like a whore," Thor said, nodding to the lap. "I wish to take you to a house of ill fame and you will name your price for every thing I take from you."

Listening to the many ribald ideas flowing from his brother, Loki was rather certain that this side of Thor had not been loosed in a while. "I might make you pay in favors, man to man," Loki suggested. These long-abandoned habits were immediately incorporated into the flow of imaginings, and they made a promise to fulfill some of these fantasies when the child could be easily left.

"My son is growing strong, thanks to you," Thor said one day. "Whatever magic you used to be able to nurse him must be very potent."

"Magic? I used no such thing. I didn't even know why I was coming to see you that, night, I only put on a cloak and came," Loki said from under the rug they were wrapped in.

"But where did you-?" Thor asked looking down in confusion.

"I had another monster in secret," Loki said flatly. "It must be my fate. Next thing you know I'll walk by a hedge and come out with a rosebush nine months later. That's approximately how I came to have an extra foal in the stable."

Thor looked at him as if for the first time. "I thought you had all these creatures to get back at me."

"Believe it or not, I've made a shambles of my life on my own power, not needing any extra motivation from you, although being dropped into an abyss did help," Loki said drily.

"So you married that brute—?" Thor inquired.

"To give a name to my wholly legitimate little wolf," Loki said bitterly. "And if I'd thought you were paying attention, I certainly wouldn't have stayed with him that long. No one wanted me, not even when I laid myself out on a silver platter in Svartalfheim, and believe me they have some practices there."

"Are you still angry at me for choosing her?" Thor asked.

"Yes," Loki said as if talking to an imbecile. "If you'd only listened to me, you'd have seen how Father and Mother will run your life if you let them. If I didn't know about all the beasts I would bear, I'd have married you in a minute. Even so, if you'd kept asking, I would have borne them with you." He looked at the face staring at him and didn't know whether to kiss it or slap it. "Whatever else you may be, Odinson, unimaginative coward among them, you're still better than anyone else. Better for me, and I'm one of a kind."

"That you are, my brother-sister," Thor stroked the cheek. "Are you going to make me pay forever?"

"Definitely." Loki nudged down the big head and imprisoned it in his slick lap.

Eventually, the king of Jotunheim did resume his duties, but he was not to be found about the castle at night. As before, Loki realized that the castle so easily reflected his moods, because a lightness seemed to have taken ahold of the court. The sun shone more warmly into the hallways and there was a great bustle in and out as the kingdom's trade prospered. Loki even reflected that some of the other realms seemed to prefer dealing with him as an intermediary to Odin, who was widely regarded as so set in his ways there was simply no talking to him. Whereas you never knew quite what would come off Loki's silver tongue.

One night Thor flew over with Mjolnir to a small room in a turret that Loki had chosen as most convenient for their lovemaking.

They had fallen into a rhythm together, a happy, private rhythm they now knew was far better than opening up their regained affections to others' scrutiny. It was the best of all possible worlds, the brothers decided, and they wanted this paradise split between the realms of frost and sun to continue forever. To that end, Loki had his old woman devise a special knot to prevent any monstrous mishaps, in addition to his usual precautions. And he avoided riding unless it was with his brother to otherwise occupy his parts.

That evening Thor found Loki still wearing the man's suit he usually wore at court, but his long hair was hanging loose and the body spilling out of the shirt was unmistakably a woman's.

Usually Loki tripped so lightly between genders that Thor was only aware of a single beloved body flowing between its different natures under his own manhood. "Are you ill, my darling?" he asked.

"I will be for the next nine months, I expect," Loki said dully. "We're to have a beast, you and me, despite every art and artifice to the contrary. Would that you had stuck to what I had to offer you as a man, my brother!" Loki said bitterly. "Best to advise father to leave a space in the line of succession for my monstrous offspring he was so keen to prevent from getting anywhere near the throne of Asgard. The purity of his precious line is forever tainted."

Thor stood there and let Loki beat him on the chest with his man's fists while the womanly cries rang out of the turret and were swallowed up by the blowing frost.


	7. Chapter 7

"A child? That's wonderful!" Thor said, holding Loki at arm's length. "I was waiting till the right moment to ask you, thinking it might be easier if it wasn't so soon, but I am so very happy to be able to ask you now! Loki, can little Magni and I come live with you? Wait, I should ask you first, will you give me your hand?"

"Oh, Thor," Loki said sadly, regarding the pure excitement on his brother's face. "I don't think you realize—"

"You can dress me up in whatever jotunns get married in, and you can take care of the music and the feast and all the things you manage so well," Thor gushed. "And I'll take care of the battle strategy," he finished on an equally upbeat note.

Loki shut his mouth. Thor realized quite well what they were up against.

They talked and talked, Loki allowing himself to get carried away completely as he very nearly had the first time his brother was planning a future for them.

"Getting Magni away from Asgard is going to be very difficult. They're used to me going out at night to see my mistress, but—"

"Mistress?" Loki's eyes narrowed.

"It's just that I found a woman who looks something like you and pay her very well to let me be seen coming in and out of her cottage occasionally," Thor said as if he were the brother gifted in subterfuge. "You think I would take any chances now that I have you again?"

Thor related the complicated precautions he'd undertaken from the moment he realized his brother was back in his life. Firstly, he'd begun flirting with a whole group of servants to camouflage his real interests. When he'd started visiting Loki in Jotunheim, he wasn't content with the shade Loki had constructed to mislead Heimdall about his brother's whereabouts. The forever-prince of Asgard began haunting some very seamy taverns in various realms, the kind of places that advertised complete privacy and meant it.

He saw Loki's sorrowful glance. "You haven't been there in a long time. You forget how everyone at home watches you every moment, my love. I wanted something that was totally mine for once, is that so wrong?"

"I forget how not-exactly-useless you are," Loki said, and kissed him.

Hopefully, Loki would never realize that Thor had been completely useless all the years that they had been apart.

It wasn't Jane's fault. Over time Thor realized that he'd needed to bring someone into his world to bear witness to his life, to prove that Asgard was as good as he used to believe.

But once he got his earthly wife home and the life at court surrounded them, only then could he see how little there was to it. Jane had agreed to be entombed alive with him in Asgard and all its suffocating routines, and it hadn't taken long to realize that she only looked forward to the visits of the astrologers and soothsayers with whom she talked endlessly about the stars. She took notes and wrote and wrote, leaving instructions to get the piles of writing to Eric Selvig or someone like him, should they ever be able to leave Asgard again.

Jane's health problems had started almost immediately, but without the bridge there was no way for her to reverse the degenerative process that would befall any Midgardian trapped in Asgard for the long term. When the bridge had gone up, he's tried bringing Jane to Earth, but she was already so ill the change suited her even less than the new realm that would be her tomb.

Thor's only idea had been to be so happy together that time would stand still.

The last thing Jane said to him tore apart Thor's understanding of the life they shared.

"I'm so glad I was able to do this for you," she'd whispered as she lay expiring in her childbed.

"Ssh, save your strength, my darling," he said, trying not to look at all the blood, which he felt as though he'd shed with his own hand.

"I wanted to give you an heir, to thank you for all you gave me. The freedom to study, to—" she lost her breath for a moment. "To be myself. You aren't like them. Never, never cared about the silly parties, the—" Her eyes cleared and she looked straight into his own. "Thor. You never forced things between us once we saw how things would be. Another would have—Another—"

Her eyes burned with some message that would never be delivered, and then went blank. For a long moment, Thor was silent.

All this time, Thor had believed that he was the one who was paying every day on the debt he owed Jane for having stayed in his world. His parents had been so happy when he married, and that had seemed important for a time. With Jane's limp hand in his, Thor realized they'd both been engaged in some cycle of one-upmanship, trying to be more perfectly giving because the desire not to hurt the other was the only thing they truly shared, and even then they had seen their situation completely differently.

It all seemed like a very poor reason to steal a woman's youth and her life, he saw from the carnage surrounding the frail body. Then he went mad for a time, thinking of the debt his wife had left him with, in the form of a new life he felt totally unable to confront.

Thor hated himself for how quickly he began to see Magni as a gift from Jane to him and his rekindled love, the child he and Loki would probably never have. Those dark days after he lost his wife, he'd not been able to understand the significance of what Loki had done by offering his breast to his brother's child. Since Loki had never tended a normal child, he could not have known, either, Thor was sure. The milk had drawn a direct and powerful link between the nursemaid and his son, erasing any concerns about Magni being the child of another. Loki was the reason he began to see the baby as "his child," and not merely "the child," the new father was convinced.

But he knew he should be ashamed of taking up with Loki again so quickly, and even more so for the passion their bodies kindled together, but it was as if they had never been apart. Thor wondered now that he could have existed for years, contenting himself with seeing his brother a couple times a year across a crowded room.

The few times they'd coincided at fancy events, Loki sat there, pale and nearly silent at a banquet table. He was a small figure among the giants but quite clearly his own person, not the least expressed in his complete refusal to be one gender or the other full-time, as well as to make a big issue of that fact. To be with his brother—for that's how he would always think of Loki, jotunn blood notwithstanding, bare quim or no—was to do more than give in to the environment, which is what Thor had been so proud to do for so long. It was to have the urge to reshape the world according to his desires. At this point in his life, Thor was far too hungry for something real to see that urge as selfish anymore.

Their plans had run out for the evening. The two of them had been lying silently in the bed set up in the turret room next to the magical fire Loki conjured so that they need never be separated by cloth when they were together.

"I choose you," Thor said, lifting up the black hair to kiss at the nape of the neck. "Magni and I choose you."

Magni's vote was very clearly for his first and best nursemaid. Loki still stole back into the Asgardian fortress every once in awhile to see the boy. It was a huge risk but Thor and his mistress both wished for the three to always be together. Even as they knew that Odin would suffer his Thor's abdication very ill, but he would not suffer losing his next heir at all.

"Perhaps if we told Mother," Thor said again.

"She can't be trusted upon in these matters, Thor, and I love the woman dearly. They've let me go because my part in their drama was never very large. You, my love, they will fight for." Then Loki whispered to the scratchy cheek, "And so will I. The only thing I regret is that it's a very poor time for me to be hiding a monster on the way."

Thor had given up arguing about Loki's fatalism. "I hope it's a fire-breathing dragon with wings that can rain fire upon Asgard's armies. Or rather, I know too many of them," he amended. "Perhaps it can make the same impression by setting fire in the disused wing where no one goes, then."

Loki rubbed the chest in which he fit so nicely. "I have everything to gain and you have everything to lose with this scheme," he whispered. "I plan on making it up to you every day."

"I like our trades," Thor said throatily. "Once you are no longer with child, you will surprise me once more in a brothel, where you fit so well."

They gave in to recollections of the special treat Loki had arranged for his lover the night before he returned to his kingdom. The younger brother merely told Thor to meet him in one of the house of ill fame. Since the torrent of fantasies they had created together included any number of perversions, Thor merely hoped to watch some of the naughty revues with his brother.

When he arrived to the whorehouse, which was far from the best, he was led into a parlor where patrons could have a drink and see some of the wares on display. On one of the tables he saw a voluptuous redhead brushing her full curls with a bored gesture, as would befit someone condemned to satisfy others' curiosity, for starters, that night and every night.

She sat there with in a bodice that propped up her considerable bosom. Her petticoats were spread apart by an unladylike posture that revealed every inch of her stockings and garters, all the way up to —

Her quim, shorn in the Svartalfheim fashion. It was Loki, transfigured into a form that no one would ever connect with him.

Thor surged forward and she gave him a bored look while reciting the prices for various acts.

When her patron had pressed some coins into her hand, she surprised him by sinking to her knees right in front of the other guests, where normally such distraction was offered in one of the small rooms for rent.

His big hands in the red hair, Thor was beside himself watching his lover engulf his member with her expert mouth —in that respect and every other, Loki could completely pass for a harlot—while watching the rest of the room begin to watch them.

Thor ended up ripping off the petticoats so that the whole room could see his thick fingers filling the bare orifice while hearing the whimpers of satisfaction he could wrest from the supposedly hardened prostitute. Loki pressed a carved implement into his hand, and Thor mastered both orifices at once while the rest of the guests made lewd remarks.

All the while, Loki looked at him with the same indelible dignity. He/she was his mistress, she let herself be taken from every angle, but Thor couldn't ever come to the end of this creature who would always be strange while remaining utterly familiar.

Finally Loki motioned for one of the other harlots to come over, a pretty girl with blonde hair who had been stroking one of the patrons watching Thor and Loki's show. The girl seemed to know exactly what she was being called for, and she and the redhead began kissing each other avidly. All Thor could do was stand there in mute arousal.

"Do you think I belong only to you?" Loki countered while guiding Thor's excitement from behind her. She kissed the other girl while Thor possessed her in the way that had always been their private pastime, the sharing between two brothers with its tang of incest.

At times, Loki would gaze back at Thor so he should know the whole double-edged evening for what it was: an affirmation that Loki was now, and had always been, awaiting the chance to give Thor pleasure. That he did belong to Thor, and even the debasement of being had in front of others was really the secret, public commerce of a love affair that would rock the kingdom to its foundations.

Now Loki's belly was beginning to be visible, though he and his old woman were taking care to hide the pregnancy with special clothes and spells. All of their plans depended upon no one considering where the jotunn king's latest child had come from.

One day Loki sat down for dinner at the head of the large banquet hall, which was filled with citizens of Jotunheim as well as some of the many visitors from other realms attracted by brisk trade. As on a usual day, he clapped his hands three times to signal that the servants should begin distributing the feast. But on this occasion, the musicians began playing a joyful tune and the servants stayed in their places as instructed.

The members of the court and the guests looked around, confused. Loki was staring in the direction of the entrance, and so everyone else followed suit. In a moment, a woman veiled from head to toe stood in the doorway.

"There she is at last!" Loki cried. "My dear jotunns, please meet she who is to be your queen!"

There was a murmur in the crowd, no doubt in part because Loki had never shown any interest in women as mates. The music became even more joyful, and the old woman and the thieving girl guided the heavily veiled woman to her place next to Loki, who put a proud arm around the newcomer.

"As some of you have noticed, I have not always been at home for the last year, and it is time you know why. My bride has bewitched me with her beauty and her steadfast heart. Her insight it typical among the Vanir, who are a gifted people, but still, our icy homeland was not as immediately attractive to her as its king." There were good-natured laughs among the crowd. "But she finally agreed to make Jotunheim her home, and I pledge that after our wedding this evening, when she is revealed in all her beauty, you will shortly love her as I love her!"

The sovereign clapped his hands three times and the feast began, this evening with a lively discussion about this new development. "I told you he'd been looking unusually cheerful," was the gist of what Loki heard around him. He ate as if he got engaged to a woman every day of the week, but his poor bride-to-be merely sat there and let herself be gawked at.

"I'm positive you're making sport of me with this plan," Thor grumbled from under the bridal veil. Loki had created a spell so that Thor's words came out in one of the more obscure Vanir dialects, one that Loki had learned the rudiments of during his studies, but which no one else in the room was likely to understand.

"All of my contracts have been signed 'Loki, King of Jotunheim.' Do you want every agreement to come up for question by turning me into a queen? None of the jotunns bat an eye at my being woman or man as the mood suits, but they need some sense of continuity," Loki protested, mostly sincerely. It truly did make sense to keep the title he'd always had, but having Thor as his queen was going to be very amusing.

"Well I suppose I should take that constancy as an assurance that you won't go back on the contract you signed with me, assuring equal rule," Thor said in the high voice that was part of Loki's spell.

"You can take all of it, as far as I'm concerned. The next months won't be easy, and battle doesn't get my blood going the way it does for you."

"I know what makes your blood get going," Thor pressed his gowned leg against Loki's trousers.

"That you do, which is why we have a beastie on the way. It won't be a child, Thor. You must prepare yourself," Loki said seriously.

"Surely you won't ruin a bride's pre-wedding feast," Thor said lightly. "Look, your subjects are already glowering at me, thinking that I will bring you sorrow."

The bride was not totally joking. He'd never been around this many full-sized Frost Giants at once, and he didn't wasn't entirely sure that they would be happy when they discovered their new co-ruler was lately of Asgard.

Thor looked around the room while the meal continued, Loki occasionally directing witty remarks to the visitors. The king was recalled to his bride by a shivering of veils.

"Oh, I should have thought, my love. Someone bring a brazier over to my betrothed!" the king of Asgard called. A number of lackeys began scurrying around to bring one of the small stoves from the visitors' section over to the king's bride. "I've gotten used to the cold that jotunns prefer, and I forget your constitution can't adapt as readily," Loki said apologetically. "Better?"

"Yes," Thor said. "But I wasn't so much scared as laughing. It's like the discovery of fire," Thor said wonderingly.

"What are you talking about?" Loki asked, giving in to his biological imperative to eat for two. He'd not been feeling ill at all, this time around, and he didn't know whether that meant he was carrying an exceptionally hungry beast or what.

"The jotunns. They are completely fascinated by you. I had thought you'd merely bewitched them all into accepting your leadership," Thor said, watching the adulation with which Loki's subjects viewed him.

"Oh," Loki chuckled. "Jotunns have a huge inferiority complex when it comes to the other races. They feel themselves graceless and witless, and the fact that I, one of their own, can crack a joke and dismount gracefully from my horse means more to them than anything else. They like the trade I've brought to our realm, but they'd be content with listening to me make sport of all and sundry."

After the meal, the couple watched the courtiers scurry out to prepare themselves for the evening's nuptials.

"Are you ready?" Loki asked the old woman.

"The knots will be undone just as soon as you've tied yours," his most trusted advisor said.

As soon as the subjects and visitors could scrape together their wedding gifts and return in their finest clothes, the wedding commenced. Loki spent considerable energy on building up his magical defenses against Heimdall and any other observational capabilities of Asgard, so he was sure the short ceremony would have him bound to Thor before Asgard could begin any retaliations.

The one hitch had been finding a priest qualified to carry out the banns. Loki found an old shaman who was half-senile, and luckily he had managed to stumble through the short ritual.

Loki parted the veil enough to kiss his bride, and then moved the fabric back even further after his subjects had applauded and wished them good health.

There were gasps. "Those closest to me have always known where my heart belonged," the king said in a clear voice. "I once thought Thor my brother, but now I know him to be my heart's desire. You will find him to be a loyal member of our tribe."

"I have renounced my country, never fear," Thor spoke in his own voice for the first time. "I love Jotunheim for the fine home it has given my beloved all these years. I hope that we will be joined in our mutual love of Loki your ruler."

The two of them lost themselves for a moment, feeling their longed-for union at last accomplished. At that show of affection, the citizens seemed to glower a little less frostily at the former Asgardian prince.

At that moment, the blind man came rushing in with one hand on the armless man's back. "Here he is!" the old man panted.

Thor carefully took the bundle from the old man. "Magni's here. We're going to be all right."

The baby coughed a little bit and then cooed when Loki took him. "My people! Say hello to Prince Magni!"

The small child giggled and waved hands and feet at the assembled giants. "A child in the court!" everyone exclaimed. "A child at last!"

Thor was rather nervous at seeing all these huge creatures clustering around his son, but his new subjects were delighted with the third member of the royal family. It was so unlike Asgard, Thor reflected, standing there still wearing women's clothes. At home, everyone would have been aghast by all the muddling of genders and brothers, one of them with child, and the fact that two more members of the Asgardian royal line were standing there like refugees from a cold that was worse than the storm blowing around the jotunn castle.

The Frost Giants were stretching their broad faces into silly grins, much to the delight of Magni. Thor put two heavy arms around the belly that was filling out Loki's formal suit. "This is a good place to raise a child," he confided.

"And if it's a bear?" Loki asked from within Thor's protective arms.

"Then we'll have fish on the menu every day," Thor assured him.

"And if it's a honeybee?"

"We shall plant enough flowers indoors to keep it happy all year round," the new queen declared to his mate.

No matter what fresh horror Loki was likely to bring into the world, the king of Jotunheim was no longer afraid. His pregnancy was ensuing with no nightmares for once, and at the first tinge of worry, Thor was there with his plodding kind of reassurance telling Loki to shut up because it would be fine.

This was the way it was supposed to be, the royal couple thought as one, watching little Magni being passed from one giant palm to another as the jotunns intoned some traditional nursery rhyme they'd not had occasion to loose in the castle these many years. There was no pressure to produce an heir, because they already had one, not that they saw the baby they were raising as a function of any throne. And they were determined to keep Magni away from the Allfather's pressures and expectations that had so scarred them both.

"It's nice to know that you are here to rule, in case, you know, in case I need you to," Loki said after the wedding guests had cleared out and Magni was sleeping tethered to their bed with one of the magic strings the old woman had used to fetch the baby from Asgard. The wise woman had unraveled the bridge that connected Asgard to the other realms, but their parents must be aware by now that the next two in line for the throne had vanished. "Last time I was answering my correspondence right in the middle of my pains."

"It's good to feel useful," Thor said. "I'm finally my own man. If I had to listen to one more speech from Father…."

"You'll find we don't set much store by speeches here in Jotunheim. As a matter of fact, I think I wrote some kind of law prohibiting addresses of longer than 5 minutes," Loki snuggled contentedly, the three of them in bed together at last.

The new family slept peaceably together and woke up to a world full of possibility. Early in the morning, Loki left the little boy in the care of his friends, bundled up his new wife and led him out into the snow. "I'm sorry to drag you out like this, my love, but the longer we wait, the worse it will be," Loki said as he took Thor to the stables. "We should ride out now."

Loki had mounted a magnificent horse and motioned for Thor to mount behind him. Though the horse had neither bridle nor saddle, it obeyed Loki perfectly. "This is a well-trained animal," Thor shouted as they galloped into the forest.

"Oh, pardon me," Loki called out. "Sleipnir, this is my new spouse." The animal screeched to a halt, nearly throwing off Thor but not, for some reason, Loki. "Thor, this is my most recent child, Sleipnir."

The horse and the man regarded each other with equal suspicion. "Come now, Sleipnir, we must keep going!"

They proceeded as before, riding deep into the forest until it seemed as though the sun must have set again just after it had risen.

"All right, we can stop," Loki ordered and their ride stopped in some nondescript patch of forest.

They dismounted and Thor looked around uneasily. "What is this errand you dragged me out of bed for? We need to be monitoring our enemies, and whatever else your people may expect of the royal family on our honeymoon." In a moment he jumped in front of his husband while shouting, "Loki!"

Loki quickly pushed Thor into the snow. The big man gaped from the ground as the slight woman clad in riding breeches stood there wrestling with some huge animal. "What did we say about biting people? What did we say, my dear one?" she crooned. The enormous wolf had its paws on Loki's shoulders and they were embracing happily. "Well, don't just sit there," Loki said over his shoulder. "Fenrir, this is my new spouse." The wolf growled and bared its teeth. "And my brother. Little wolf," the animal stopped snarling. "This is Thor."

The warmth in Loki's voice calmed the animal, and he looked from one human to the other. "You'll see him from time to time, Fenrir, and I wanted you to know that Mummy will be especially displeased if you bite him. Understood?"

The wolf put all of its paws in the snow and approached Thor cautiously, sniffing. A moment later, the animal ran off, pausing once to look back with glowing eyes.

"That went rather well," Loki said happily as they got back on the horse. "I didn't want either him or Sleipnir to hear from someone else. They'd be very hurt. And Fenrir is so sensitive when it comes to me. Very protective, so that it's best for him to have time to see you're all right and adjust to you being a member of the family."

The horse was unbelievably fast, and in no time at all they were back at the castle. As they were nearing the stables they passed a few knots of people. The two sovereigns walked hand in hand from the stables into the main part of the castle. All of a sudden the pickpocket girl came running towards them.

"There you are at last. Come quickly, we just sent out a party after you."

"What's happened?" Loki asked, rushing behind the girl.

The three of them burst into the royal chamber, which hosted an unusual number of people. In addition to the rest of Loki's close friends, there were a couple of physicians and a soothsayer all crowded around the bed. Thor's bulk made them melt away.

"Magni?" he said in a small voice as he reached for his son.

The little boy convulsed into a fit of coughing that subsided into even more ominous wheezing.

"It's merely a cold. Children get sick all the time. It's bound to be an adjustment, being in a new climate," one of the physicians said with a note of uncertainty, observing the flushed face that looked even more angry and red compared to all the jotunns in the room.

The old woman and Loki exchanged a glance. In a few minutes the king's voice rang out clearly. "Thank you for your services, good sirs. Would you be so kind as to wait nearby?" Once the door closed Loki turned to his friends and Thor. "It's Mother."


End file.
